Absolute Beginners is a 1986 British rock musical film adapted from the Colin MacInnes book of the same name about life in late 1950s London. The film was directed by Julien Temple, featured David Bowie and Sade, and a breakout role by Patsy Kensit. The film was screened out of competition at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival.

Upon its release on 18 April 1986, Absolute Beginners received immense coverage in the British media. At the time, the British film industry was perceived as being on the point of collapse (with the recent failure of the film Revolution). However, the movie was panned by critics and became a box office flop. Some of the criticisms included stylistic anachronisms, such as the mini-skirt and decidedly 1980s music from the likes of the Style Council and Sade, the bowdlerisation of Kensit's character (Crepe Suzette had been depicted as a promiscuous negrophile in the book), and the casting of Bowie, who made it a condition of his musical contribution.

Absolute Beginners has subsequently gained status as a cult movie, in part due to its soundtrack. Some people compare the movie as the British equivalent of Streets of Fire, a 1984 American movie that was a retro-stylized rock movie with a notable soundtrack, also a commercial failure.

Absolute Beginners may refer to:

David Bowie ( /ˈboʊ.i/ BOH-ee; born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. He is known for his distinctive voice and the intellectual depth and eclecticism of his work.

Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July 1969, when his song "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman" and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Bowie's impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture." The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation.

Raymond Douglas "Ray" Davies, CBE ( /ˈdeɪvɨz/ DAY-viz; born 21 June 1944) is an English rock musician. He is best known as lead singer and songwriter for The Kinks, which he led with his younger brother, Dave. He has also acted, directed and produced shows for theatre and television.

Since the dissolution of the Kinks in 1996, Ray Davies has embarked on a solo career as a singer-songwriter.

Davies was born at 6 Denmark Terrace, Fortis Green in Muswell Hill, North London, England. He is the seventh of eight children born to Fred and Annie Davies, including six older sisters and younger brother Dave Davies. He went to William Grimshaw Secondary Modern School (now called Fortismere School).

Davies was an art student at Hornsey College of Art in London in 1962–1963, when the Kinks developed into a professional performing band. After the Kinks obtained a recording contract in early 1964, Davies emerged as the chief songwriter and de facto leader of the band, especially after the band's breakthrough success with his early composition "You Really Got Me", which was released as the band's third single in August of that year.

Helen Folasade Adu OBE (born 16 January 1959; better known as Sade), is a British singer-songwriter, composer, and record producer. She first achieved success in the 1980s as the frontwoman and lead vocalist of the Brit and Grammy Award winning English group Sade.

Sade was born in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. Her middle name, Folasade, means honour confers your crown. Her parents, Adebisi Adu, a Nigerian lecturer in economics of Yoruba background, and Anne Hayes, an English district nurse, met in London, married in 1955 and moved to Nigeria. Later, when the marriage ran into difficulties, Anne Hayes returned to England, taking four-year-old Sade and her older brother Banji to live with her parents. When Sade was 11, she moved to Holland-on-Sea to live with her mother, and after completing school at 18 she moved to London and studied at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

While in college, she joined a soul band, Pride, in which she sang backing vocals. Her solo performances of the song "Smooth Operator" attracted the attention of record companies and in 1983, she signed a solo deal with Epic Records taking three members of the band, Stuart Matthewman, Andrew Hale and Paul Denman, with her. Sade and her band produced the first of a string of hit albums. Their debut album Diamond Life was in 1984. She is the most successful solo female artist in British history, having sold over 110 million albums worldwide.