For those who know Meat Loaf only as the powerful singer of rock anthems like "Paradise by the Dashboard Light", it may come as a surprise that he was a serious, stage-trained actor long before he was a musical star. The Texas-born thespian landed a role on Broadway in "Hair" soon after arriving in NYC in the late 1960s and even acted in Shakespeare's "As You Like It" (in Central Park for Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival), among other non-musical plays. But it was his voice, a bombastic mixture of rock and opera, that earned him his best opportunities. The 1973 stage production "More Than You Deserve" brought Meat Loaf in contact with its composer Jim Steinman who was ecstatic to find the perfect singer for his brand of pop, a combination of Richard Wagner and Little Richard. Together they would collaborate on Meat Loaf's debut album, "Bat Out of Hell" (1977), which became the third-best-selling album in history. Meat Loaf also acted on stage in "The Rocky Horror Show", leading to his feature debut in the 1975 cult classic movie version of the musical, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".

His acting career languished as he enjoyed the rock star life and subsequently that fame limited the types of roles for which he was considered. Although he starred as Alan Rudolph's "Roadie" (1980), a film with its own cult following, most of Meat Loaf's movies were forgettable affairs. He had small parts in two high-profile pictures in 1992, "Wayne's World" and "Leap of Faith", but his career was still just limping along until the explosion of 1998. That year saw him as the wild-eyed Bible-quoting bad guy of "Black Dog" (starring Patrick Swayze), as Dennis Quaid's best friend in Quaid's directing debut, the made-for-cable "Everything Rises" (TNT), and as Gillian Anderson's husband in the slums of Cincinnati for director Peter Chelsom's highly-acclaimed "The Mighty". He subsequently portrayed a small town 60s sheriff coming to terms with his own prejudice in "Crazy in Alabama", helmed by Antonio Banderas, and donned a fat suit to play a 400 pound ex-bouncer in "The Fight Club" (both 1999), co-starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. A trimmed-down Meat Loaf was suddenly one of the hottest character actors in the business.

In 2002, Meat Loaf portrayed the character Lizard in the drug comedy feature "Formula 51", starring Samuel L. Jackson.