The biography, or biopic, is an evergreen film genre–Hollywood never gets tired of based-on-a-true-story movies about famous people, and neither do audiences, apparently. Two of these sorts of movies–Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Bradley Cooper’s Maestro–dominated the 2024 Oscar nominations, with Oppenheimer earning the most nods of any film this year.
Casting an actor to play a real, famous person can often be a pretty tall task. We love to get hung up on the look of the person, often at the expense of the substance, which is unfortunate because very often the right person for the job doesn’t necessarily look right for the part at first glance. On the other hand, sometimes you have somebody like Austin Butler, who looks so much like the real Elvis Presley that his performance in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis felt like a CGI fever dream the first time I saw the trailer. But that movie worked because Butler actually delivered an excellent performance on top of just looking right for the part.
My point? Looks aren’t everything. But they are something–you don’t usually want your actor to not be recognizable as the person they’re playing, unless that’s the actual purpose of the casting. Such as with Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, in which six different actors played Bob Dylan. But most biographical films aren’t quite as creatively ambitious as that.
With that said, let’s take a look at some of the most notable biopic films, and compare the looks of their stars with the real people they were portraying in their respective films, starting with this year’s Oscar frontrunners.