Chris Isaak

Although he bristles at being labeled a “retro” act, Chris Isaak's mournful, melancholy ballads, full of ache and lost love, suggest 1950s rockers like Elvis Presley. Mass audiences learned of the Stockton, California native with 1991's hit “Wicked Game,” which David Lynch used in his film Wild at Heart. Singing success has led to film roles, beginning with bit parts in Married to the Mob (1988), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). His first significant role, however, came in Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1994, opposite Bridget Fonda), in which Isaak played the father of the boy believed to be the reincarnation of Buddha. In 1998 he played doomed Apollo 1 astronaut Ed White in Tom Hanks's miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. Isaak is set to star in his own weekly television comedy The Chris Isaak Show (2001)