It's not an uncommon occurrence for established musicians to embark on acting careers; bottom line is it's all essentially the same job - entertaining the public. For Tim Mcgraw, it was an almost reluctant step that he only took when he was sure his music career was safe. 

Tim McGrawTim McGraw opens up about beginning his acting career

The Grammy winning country superstar isn't going to sit and pretend that he's always been into acting, because truth be told, it was never something he thought about. In fact, sports were his passion in high school even before his love of music kicked in.

'As a kid I always loved movies and did some stuff in school plays, but it was something I was never serious about', he explains. 'I was an athlete growing up, I played all kinds of sports. So music sort of came late; I always sang in church and all this sort of thing. I was interested in acting but when I started playing music and then I had success, people started offering me things to do.'

Watch the trailer for 'The Shack' here:


 

Even as opportunities to expand his career as an entertainer came through, he still had his reservations about it - especially as he was worried it would mar his 'cool' image. 'You get chances to do things and I didn't want to do it', he admits. 'The worst thing you can do as a musician is to do something that makes you uncool and go be bad in a movie can make you pretty uncool. I was a little afraid of it earlier in my career, I wanted to make sure my career was established.'

Nonetheless, when Golden Globe winner Ricky Schroder came along with a little indepedent project about a Native American boxer called 'Black Cloud' (released in 2004), Tim was more than tempted. Which is just as well because that led to an exciting film break soon after. 

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'He came to my show and - I've never done it before - he asked me if I wanted to play a Sheriff in a small indie movie, and it was my first experience doing it', said Tim. 'I'm so glad I did because it wasn't long after that, I got a chance to read a script called 'Friday Night Lights'. I'd had the script for a while, I really wasn't interested in doing anymore movies because my career was really busy with music, and I sat down one night and read that script. I just completely thought, 'I know that guy. I know who that guy is and I can play that guy'.'

Tim's latest acting venture is the Christian drama 'The Shack', directed by Stuart Hazeldine and based on the book by William P. Young. It co-stars Octavia Spencer and Sam Worthington.