What 1976 sci-fi film stars David Bowie as an alien on a mission to get water?
Answer
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The 1976 sci-fi film starring David Bowie as an alien seeking water is The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Directed by Nicolas Roeg, the film adapts Walter Tevis’s 1963 novel. Bowie plays Thomas Jerome Newton, an extraterrestrial who arrives on Earth hoping to develop technology that can transport water back to his drought-stricken home planet.
Newton uses advanced knowledge to build a business empire, but his encounter with human greed, addiction, sexuality, and bureaucracy gradually undermines his mission. The film is deliberately surreal and meditative rather than a conventional space adventure, which helped give it a lasting cult reputation.
It was Bowie’s first starring film role. The title can be confused with later alien-arrival stories, but neither Contact nor The Martian features Bowie in this role; 2001: A Space Odyssey is a separate 1968 science-fiction film.