10 Hot Actresses With Surprisingly Good Singing Voices

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Movie: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Rocky Horror would have been dead in the water without Tim Curry's ridiculous Frank N. Furter, but it helps to have at least one other person on the set of a musical who can sing. And no, Meat Loaf doesn't count. Fortunately, Sarandon, then still at the start of her now-impressive career, proved she had the pipes to cut it from the moment she chimed in on "Dammit, Janet."

Movie: Moulin Rouge! (2001)

A girl makes 30 (or so) movies and marries a diminutive Scientologist and you think you know her—so we thought about Kidman, who had already made To Die For (1995) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Then she shows up in Moulin Rouge! as Satine the courtesan, or in layman's terms, Satine the fancy hooker, with a heart of gold and a throat of gold as well. Maybe she finally found her voice after she left Cruise.

Movie: Chicago (2002)

Renee had done a little bit of singing in the cult classic Empire Records (1995), but nobody was prepared for her Broadway-caliber vocals on tunes like "Nowadays" and "Roxie (The Name on Everybody's Lips)" in Chicago. Renee is an impressive vocal talent—Richard Gere, not so much.

Movie: Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Minnie's an experienced singer, but she didn't actually sing in her performance in Phantom of the Opera; since she had no training in opera, her vocals were dubbed. But one song sung by Minnie (and written by Andrew Lloyd Webber) did make the film: "Learn to Be Lonely," which played over the closing credits.

Driver's secondary career as a singer/songwriter has unfolded quietly. She's released two albums, Everything I've Got in my Pocket (2004) and Seastories (2007), with help from folks like The Wallflowers, Ryan Adams, and Liz Phair.

Movie: Hustle & Flow (2005)

Taraji sings the chorus of the Oscar-winning song "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp" with a passion and intensity that overshadows Three 6 Mafia's rapping and the struggles of the film's protagonist, Djay. Additionally, Henson also sang and starred in Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself (2009).

Movie: Walk the Line (2005)

The casting of Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line made country music fans raise an eyebrow; news that Reese Witherspoon of Legally Blonde would play June Carter Cash made heads explode. But when Reese—who is, after all, a Louisiana-born southern belle—got up there and started belting out classic June tunes, moviegoers had to admit that she was doing a damn good job (which was validated by her eventual Oscar). By the time she and Phoenix went at it on "Jackson," there was no doubting the method to the casting directors' madness.

Movie: Mamma Mia! (2008)

We knew from Mean Girls (2004), Veronica Mars and Big Love that young Seyfried was an incredibly, jarringly pretty young girl, but what those roles didn't tell us was that she had studied Broadway-style song-and-dance, and even opera. When she busted out "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" in Mamma Mia!, we realized she's truly a multifaceted talent. 

Album: Break-Up (with Pete Yorn, 2008)

Scarlett sang a brief ditty in The Other Boelyn Girl (2008), but her career as a singer (not just a singing actress) has been simmering beneath the surface for years. She had a song on a celebrity benefit album in 2006, then released her debut, Anywhere I Lay My Head (an album of mostly Tom Waits covers), in 2008.

However, she didn't really wow anyone until 2009, with the release of Break Up, an album of duets with Pete Yorn that the pair had recorded in 2006, and its earworm single "Relator." But it's hardly surprising Scarlett is a good singer—wait for it, wait for it —the girl's got a set of lungs on her. 

TV Show: Glee 

For the first two seasons of Glee, Naya was there to a) look hot and b) sing a little and do high kicks in a cheerleader uniform. Starting with the third season, though, she finally got to show off her powerhouse voice and prove she's more than eye candy with one of the sexiest covers of Adele's "Someone Like You" and "Rumor Has It."

Movie: Pitch Perfect (2012)

If you only know Anna Kendrick as a movie good girl—one who sang maybe just a little bit, and badly at that, in the karaoke scene in Up In the Air (2009)—then you're clearly not up on your Broadway shows. And for that, we forgive you. But FYI, at 12-years-old, Kendrick became the third-youngest ever Tony Award nominee when she sung in High Society in 1998. She went on to act and sing in other musicals, including A Little Night Music, and made her movie singing debut in Camp (2003).