Biopics are an endless genre in Hollywood. It seems just about every week there's a new, usually inspiring film released that's about a real person...or inspired by a real person. Everyone from scientists to athletes to singers to, honestly, notable figures in any profession can be fodder for a film.
Over the weekend, a new biopic premiered: Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy as physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. But there was a bigger film that was also released this weekend: Barbie, starring Margot Robbie. It beat Oppenheimer at the box office.
1. Barbie's success got me thinking of Margot's recent past roles, specifically her turn as Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. She played her in Quentin Tarantino's 2019 semi-fictional tale about Hollywood in the 1960s. I genuinely forgot how much Margot looked like the late actor. Not every performer perfectly captures the physical appearance of the person they're playing. It's not easy to, but I'd say Margot did.
She isn't the only actor that has. Here are another 11 performers in a TV show or film biopic who got the physical resemblance of their real-life characters down. Now, did they embody the person's personality? Well, that might just be a whole other list.
2. Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in Blonde (2022)
3. Lily James as Pamela Anderson in Pam & Tommy (2022)
4. Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies in Mank (2020)
5. Michelle Krusiec as Anna May Wong in Hollywood (2020)
6. Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis in Feud (2017)
7. Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper in Trumbo (2015)
8. Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn (2011)
9. Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator (2002)
10. Halle Berry as Dorothy Dandridge in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999)
11. Jason Scott Lee as Bruce Lee (no relation) in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993)
12. And finally, Robert Downey Jr. as Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin (1992)
