Johnny Flynn on the challenges of playing David Bowie 11 minutes to read By: Will Hodgkinson Johnny Flynn turned down the role of David Bowie in a new film. The British actor tells Will Hodgkinson why he then changed his mind. Who would play David Bowie in a movie? Any film about a beloved rock star runs the risk of creating an image that clashes with the one in the minds of fans, but with Bowie that danger reaches another level. He was everything from the alien rock god Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke of the mid-Seventies to the Goblin King of the 1986 kids' classic, Labyrinth. Idolisation of Bowie has gone into the realm of deification. When he left us in January 2016 it came as a seismic shock, not least because he seemed too clever to fall victim to something as mundane as death.