- The Best Biopics About Real People
- Great Movies Based on True Events
- Movies You Didn't Know Were Based On Real People
- Maybe It's Not All True
- 12 Well-Known Movie Characters You Didn’t Reali...
- Historically Accurate Movies That Didn't Have T...
- Two Movies, Same True Story
- Movies Based on Real Politics
- Same Story from Different Angles
- Movies Based on Real Murders
- Movies Based On True Stories That Led To Legal ...
- Crime Movies with Scarier Truths
- Movies About Real Serial Killers
- True Movies That Took Liberties
- Dark Details That Movies Left Out From The True...
- Horror Films: What Really Happened
- Movies Based On True Stories That Were Eventual...
- Interesting Details Fans Noticed In Movies That...
- The Most Controversial Teen Movies Based On Rea...
- Movies Inspired by Grisly Scenes
- When Horror Films Exaggerated
- X-Files Eps Based in Reality
The 140+ Best Biography Movies
Biographical films explore the fascinating lives of historical figures and cultural icons. The best biography movies offer viewers a detailed look into the lives of these people, skillfully recreating stories that have shaped history and left a lasting impact on the world. With unforgettable narratives to explore, you will find these films showcase exceptional storytelling, nuanced performances, and unparalleled cinematic vision.
The best biography movies offer not just boring history, but gripping, groundbreaking, and original narratives. For instance, films like Catch Me If You Can follow the high-stakes exploits of a charming con artist, bringing together thrilling action with intriguing character development. Schindler's List, on the other hand, tackles the harrowing subject of the Holocaust, masterfully capturing the heroic efforts of one man to save lives during a dark time in history. Then there's A Beautiful Mind, which delves into the complex life of renowned mathematician John Nash, showcasing the challenges and triumphs associated with his brilliance. These films are but a few examples of the best biographical movies that excellently capture the essence of their subjects and the genre.
The lasting impact of these movies demonstrates how well they resonate with audiences, transcending time and cultural boundaries. Biographical movies not only accurately depict the lives of their subjects, but they also elevate the art of storytelling by blending truth with cinematic drama. Through these exceptional films, viewers gain fresh perspectives on the world, history, and the individuals who have shaped it, marking these biographical movies as the very best in their field.
Catch Me If You Can
Schindler's List
A Beautiful Mind
The Social Network
Raging Bull
Lawrence of Arabia
Cinderella Man
The Fighter
The Pursuit of Happyness
Remember the Titans
Walk the Line
Into the Wild
12 Years a Slave
Straight Outta Compton
The Blind Side
La Vie en rose
Andrei Rublev
The Pride of the Yankees
The People vs. Larry Flynt
Donnie Brasco
Man on Wire
Hotel Rwanda
Helter Skelter
The Imitation Game
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
A Serious Man
The Madness of King George
Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer
The Iron Lady
Born on the Fourth of July
The Rise of Catherine the Great
Fighting with My Family
Coach Carter
Man on the Moon
Anne Frank: The Whole Story
Heavenly Creatures
Love & Mercy
Baadasssss Cinema
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
All That Jazz
The Right Stuff
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
Buena Vista Social Club
Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth
Bound for Glory
Good Night, and Good Luck
See Arnold Run
Deep in My Heart
A Huey P. Newton Story
84 Charing Cross Road
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Radioactive
Sid and Nancy
The Traitor
The Crossing
Gable and Lombard
Daaaaaali !
Young Woman and the Sea
Back to Black
Gaby: A True Story
I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can
Rocky Marciano
I'm a Born Liar
Good Evening, Mr.Wallenberg
Camille Claudel
Beyond Good and Evil
An Unreasonable Man
Lords of Chaos
The Grandmaster
Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor
Max Manus: Man of War
True History of the Kelly Gang
Beyond the Sea
- Entertainment
- Watchworthy
Looking closer at movies, TV shows, and even characters based on and "inspired by" reality.
The 15 Best Biopics of All Time
Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington, and Robert De Niro star in some of the most enduring and enjoyable biopics.
We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.
The business of biopics is booming. There hasn’t been a better time for movies that tell stories based on the real lives of famous, interesting, and important people.
That’s largely because the genre has gone through some pains to get here. For years, biopics were paint-by-numbers affairs, drawn up to make a quick buck and maybe score an Oscar nomination or two.
Now, most filmmakers have figured out that there are better, more cinematic ways to tell these stories. Some of the best biopics on our list still tell a person’s story from birth to death (or close to it) but do so with a grandness that reflects the way their life was lived. Others focus on a specific period, moment, or event in a person’s life and demonstrate its importance, which encourages reflection on how that particular story still resonates in the present.
This biopic renaissance didn’t happen overnight. Throughout film history, directors have taken risks that paid off in the form of timeless biopics that pushed the genre forward. These are 15 of our favorites.
Related: The Real People Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro Portray in Killers of the Flower Moon • The Tragic True Story of the Ferrari Movie • Why Michael Oher Doesn’t Like The Blind Side
Director Spike Lee takes the approach of sharing a large percentage of the life of one of America’s most well-known and impactful civil rights leaders : Malcolm X . It’s an approach that has failed more often than not, but over three hours, Lee and star Denzel Washington are able to give Malcolm’s life the richness and attention to detail it deserves in this 1992 film. The result is a fully three-dimensional portrait that follows the man from childhood to his 1965 assassination and many places in between.
Watch on Prime Video
Tick, Tick…Boom!
The layers in the feature film debut of director Lin-Manuel Miranda are truly one of a kind. The 2021 movie introduces us to Jonathan Larson (played by Andrew Garfield), who became best known for writing the broadway musical Rent . But in Tick, Tick…Boom! , he’s both struggling to break into the musical industry and, in a parallel but future-looking story, acting in the musical he wrote before Rent . That musical? Tick, Tick…Boom! about a writer struggling to break into the musical industry. It all makes sense—somehow—on the screen, and it’s both wildly entertaining and tinged with tragedy for people who know Larson’s fate. (He’d never get to see Rent premiere.)
Watch on Netflix
I’m Not There
Most biopics feature one primary actor depicting the portions of an individual’s life that are best known to the general public. Many others might feature a younger or older actor showing the subject at a different phase of their life. I’m Not There , meanwhile, tells the story of Bob Dylan using six very distinct actors to portray the iconic singer-songwriter in various eras of his life. Among the six in this 2007 release are Christian Bale , Richard Gere , the late Heath Ledger , and, improbably, an Oscar-nominated Cate Blanchett .
Here, the biopic turns into a horror movie (with one of the most uncomfortable but appropriate musical scores of the last decade), as we follow former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (played by a never better Natalie Portman ) in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s assassination in 1963. In this 2017 film, Chilean director Pablo Larraín takes you deep into what was a national tragedy, but he does so in a uniquely personal way. In one of the film’s most devastating scenes, we see Kennedy trying to wash her husband’s blood off her body . From there, it flips, and we see her put in painstaking work to shape the way history will remember the 35th U.S. president .
The Wind Rises
A rare animated biopic, this 2013 stunner from Japanese legend Hayao Miyazaki (of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke fame) is an interesting companion piece to this summer’s hottest biopic, Oppenheimer . It depicts the life and career of Jiro Horikoshi, an engineer whose aircraft designs were eventually adopted and used by Japan during World War II. While his work advanced his field tremendously, the film shows him wracked with guilt over the way it was used, while he also deals with personal tragedy. It’s a tremendous achievement that takes advantage of its presentation to become arguably the most fanciful biopic ever.
Watch on Max Watch on Prime Video
Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the most well-known figures in American history, but books and speeches can only do so much to show the person behind the ideas. Director Ava DuVernay ’s 2014 film centers around the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, explicitly showing it wasn't the act of one man but so many, including people killed in acts of racial violence. Still, where it stands out is in its portrayal of King, who carries the hopes, fears, and memories of all these individuals on his shoulders at all times, whether he’s sitting at home with his family, in an Alabama jail cell, or in the Oval Office. The result is a portrait of an icon who’s flawed, overwhelmed, and occasionally unsure of himself.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Similar to DuVernay’s work on Selma , director Marielle Heller peels back the veil on a person famous for their goodness in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood . Her focus is Fred Rogers , the famous children’s television star, but what’s especially interesting about Tom Hanks ’ portrayal of him in the film is that his on- and off-screen personas aren’t dramatically different. The film is centered on a journalist profiling Rogers who assumes someone presenting as this kind must have another side. But in this 2019 film, we learn that while Rogers might have had feelings of sadness, anger, and anxiousness, he actively chose kindness every day, which in turn made everything else feel insignificant.
One of the more fictionalized biopics on the list, this 1984 Oscar-winning epic, adapted from a Tony Award–winning play, takes the unique approach of showing the life, work, and peculiarities (that laugh!) of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart through the eyes of one of his lesser-known contemporaries, Antonio Salieri. As played by F. Murray Abraham, Salieri is consumed by jealousy, revulsion, and deep, deep admiration for his rival composer. As he gets closer to Mozart, he sees a similarly tortured soul, and for viewers, Mozart’s layers of caricature fade away.
Another biopic out of the tumult that was the United States in the 1960s, this 2001 masterpiece from director Michael Mann crosses between sports and politics with a hand as deft as its subject’s left. We see Muhammad Ali , played with remarkable complexity by Will Smith , from his first title fight to his famous knockout of George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle.” All the while, we’re shown the unforgettable details that made him one of the greatest icons of the 20th century—notably, the grace with which he moved around the ring and the acid on his tongue in a pre-fight interview—as well as the almost unbearable heaviness he carried on his shoulders that came with being Muhammad Ali.
Raging Bull
Staying in the boxing ring, this is arguably the quintessential biopic and one of the most admired films by one of cinema’s most admired directors, Martin Scorsese . In it, Robert De Niro plays Jake LaMotta , the world middleweight champion from June 1949 to February 1951. The 1980 film explores the ups and downs of his fighting career, his mob connections (including an infamously thrown fight in 1947), and the always tumultuous, often rage-filled, and violent relationships he had with his wife, Vikie, and his brother and manager, Joey. De Niro won his second Oscar for playing LaMotta—a performance for which he gained 60 pounds to play an older version of the fighter.
Watch on Max
In the 1960s, big, booming historical epics were all the rage. Lawrence of Arabia , Dr. Zhivago —if it had a musical overture and an intermission, people were there and all about it. (It was kind of weird.) But one biographical film that came a little later (in 1981) stands out as an especially successful epic with a number of historical figures criss-crossing at a monumentally important historical event: the start of the Russian Revolution. Among the figures profiled in the underrated Reds are Jack Reed ( Warren Beatty , who also directed the film), a journalist and activist who wrote one of the defining portraits of this period; Louise Bryant ( Diane Keaton ), his counterpart and on/off romantic partner; famous American playwright Eugene O’Neill ( Jack Nicholson ); and feminist and anarchist Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton). And throughout, all of the individuals featured and events chronicled are given color through real-life interviews with men and women who were actually there.
Marie Antoinette
This 2006 biopic is straight vibes. Set in pre-Revolutionary France, it features Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette not even pretending to have an accent. Converse sneakers are famously seen in the background of a shot. And the soundtrack, featuring The Strokes and The Cure among others, couldn’t sound less appropriate for the period. But by severing the connection with the time period as harshly as—well, nevermind—director Sofia Coppola crafts something that’s able to gently remind viewers this movie is a relatively simple story about a young girl who embraces the luxury around her because she’s in an otherwise impossible situation.
Julie & Julia
This 2009 Nora Ephron –directed biopic earns inclusion on this list first and foremost thanks to a truly iconic performance from the great Meryl Streep as the beloved chef, author, and television personality Julia Child . She injects tremendous heart into the role without losing some of the quirky gestures that made so many people fall in love with Child, among them blogger Julie Powell ( Amy Adams ), whose journey with Child’s cooking elevates the film further into the pantheon of best biopics. It’s a unique approach that demystifies its subject by both showing us her life and showing someone else wrestling with it.
Watch on Netflix Watch on Prime Video
An Angel at My Table
Janet Frame might not be a household name in America like other biopic subjects on this list, but hers was a life so full that a young New Zealand director named Jane Campion turned it into a true cinematic effort in 1990 in just her second feature film. Frame eventually became a renowned literary figure, and the film is based on three separate autobiographies she wrote covering different periods in her life, from childhood to adulthood. She suffered a number of personal tragedies early in her life and was later diagnosed (inaccurately) with schizophrenia. In the film’s most dramatic and pivotal scene, she learns that her first collection of short stories will be published just days before she’s scheduled to undergo a lobotomy.
Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin dissect one of the most influential individuals of the past century (you’re quite possibly reading this article on one of his devices) in this 2015 biopic. When you picture Steve Jobs in your head, you probably imagine him in black on a stage introducing a product, and this film takes place on three such days across a roughly 15-year span. But while he looks the part, Michael Fassbender’s Jobs is instead shown as vain, short-tempered, and vindictive. It’s a harsh juxtaposition, but as a biopic, it’s a fascinating experiment that is also very well-acted and relentlessly paced.
John Gilpatrick is a freelance writer and film critic from the Lehigh Valley, PA. He loves movies about space and movies about oil drillers (especially when they go together). He also thinks the Star Wars prequels are mostly OK and that Ivan Reitman's Draft Day is a low-key masterpiece. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS). You can read more of his reviews and columns at JohnLikesMovies.com .
Movies Based on True Stories
The Deadly True Events That Inspired ‘Blitz’
Chilling Facts About ‘The Amityville Horror’ House
‘Saturday Night’ Actors Compared to Real SNL Cast
Rodney Alcala’s Eerie ‘Dating Game’ Appearance
7 Horror Movies Inspired by Body Snatcher Ed Gein
Donald Trump Had an Influential Mentor in Roy Cohn
The 11 Best Sports Documentaries
The Rocky Onscreen History of Apollo 13
How Ronald Reagan Went from Movies to Politics
Is ‘Shakespeare in Love’ Accurate?
A Real Motorcycle Club Inspired ‘The Bikeriders’
Meet the Real Gary Johnson Who Inspired ‘Hit Man’
IMAGES