‘Cheap, defamatory and disgusting’: The 10 biopics that enraged their real-life subjects

Sydney Sweeney, the star of 'Euphoria' and 'The White Lotus,' continues to make headlines. Not so much for her successes (she has had several box office flops) as for the controversies she finds herself embroiled in. The first came after her participation in American Eagle's advertising campaign, in which a play on words between “jeans” and “genes” led many to believe that she was promoting white supremacy. Added to this was the revelation that she was a registered Republican, something quite unusual in Hollywood, and that the far right has used her as a meme against progressives. Amid this unfavorable environment, she has received quite negative reviews for her role in 'Christy', the story of the American boxer Christy Martin. An athlete with a career full of victories, her husband and trainer attempted to murder her in 2010. Christy survived and years later ended up marrying her biggest rival in the ring. It was an exciting role for which Sweeney had to significantly modify her physique. But her efforts have not convinced critics, nor other actors. Frazer Harrison (WireImage)

On social media, actress and model Ruby Rose accused Sweeney of “ruining the movie” and called her a “cretin.” Rose explained that she was involved in the production when it was a very different project. "The original Christy Martin script was incredible. Life changing. I was attached to play Cherry. Everyone had experience with the core material. Most of us were actually gay,“ she lamented, later implying that what had hurt the box office was that its star had political views that were not in line with the film's message. "None of ‘the people’ want to see someone who hates them, parading around pretending to be us. You’re a cretin and you ruined the film. Period. Christy deserved better." However, Sweeney had some very important support, namely Christy Martin herself, who came out in defense of the actress, saying she had "seen some people attack my friend Sydney Sweeney. Syd not only worked her ass off for this film, she worked her ass off for me. For my story. For so many others suffering in silence. So I want to be clear about who Syd is. She is my friend and ally!" she wrote on her social media. Steve Granitz (FilmMagic)

The huge success in 2018 of 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' about the life of Freddie Mercury, popularized biopics about big (and small) stars, but also made it clear that it is impossible to reflect an entire life in two hours and please everyone. In Freddie's case, the film was heavily criticized for treating his bisexuality in a frivolous, almost invisible way. In 2026, the long-awaited first part of the biopic about Michael Jackson will be released. Jackson was such a controversial and multifaceted figure that there is a lot of intrigue about how he will be portrayed so that viewers can fall in love with (and identify with) such a divisive and problematic character. But these are not the only examples, existing or forthcoming, of biopics that have aroused the fury of the real people they portray or their heirs. We review other examples in the rest of this photo gallery.Dave Hogan (Getty Images)

“It's a cheap, defamatory, politically disgusting hatchet job.” That was Trump's blunt assessment of 'The Apprentice' (2024), Ali Abbasi's film about the tycoon's youth in 1970s New York, when he was an ambitious businessman trying to carve out a reputation for himself outside the long shadow of his strict father while cementing his friendship with lawyer and political strategist Roy Cohn. Despite the harshness of Trump's words, they do not seem too out of character for someone who, from his position as president of the most powerful country in the world, recently called a journalist who asked him uncomfortable questions a “piggy.” But when 'The Apprentice,' named after the television show he hosted for several seasons, was released, Trump was still a candidate and he believed that the film starring Sebastian Stan could hurt him electorally. That fear prompted his lawyers to send a cease-and-desist letter with the intention of preventing its release, which scared many distributors and caused it to have a low-key theatrical release, despite its successful premiere at Cannes.

The screenwriter was the main target of Trump's anger, accused of inventing facts and distorting reality. “The writer of this pile of garbage, Gabe Sherman, a lowlife and talentless hack, who has long been widely discredited, knew that, but chose to ignore it,” he wrote on his social network Truth Social in reference to the portrayal of his relationship with his wife Ivana, which he said was distorted. The tycoon's anger was so predictable that the director confessed that he had struggled to find an actor willing to star in it. “They were too afraid,” Abbasi acknowledged after the premiere. “I'm not referring to anyone in particular; we just couldn't get past the publicists who represented them.” The courage of its protagonists was rewarded. The film earned an Oscar nomination for a superb Stan and another for Jeremy Strong, who gave a masterful performance as the evil Cohn. After being unable to prevent its release, Trump's office sent out a strongly worded statement that almost reads like one of the reviews in Robert Ebert's essential volume ‘The Worst Movies Ever Made’: “This 'film' is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn't even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store.” Joe McNally (Getty Images)

In 2004, it was impossible to predict that a young New Yorker who had just created a social network for college students would end up rubbing shoulders with the president of the United States, managing a fortune valued at more than $200 billion, and becoming one of the most powerful people in the world. Those early years, the origins and the first cracks in the creation of Mark Zuckerberg's empire, as recounted by Ben Mezrich in ‘The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook’, were the material that screenwriter Aaron Sorkin worked on in ‘The Social Network’ (2010), brought to the big screen by David Fincher. In it, a splendid Jesse Eisenberg plays a secretive, devious, and resentful Zuckerberg, something that did not sit well with the tech mogul. “They just kind of made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful,” he said after its release. Dana Edelson (©NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection / Everett Collection /Cordon Press)

What angered him most was that the reason he created the social network was distorted and that people thought he had done it solely to get revenge on a woman and to meet girls. “They just can’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things,” he clarified. However, he also found positive aspects: "It’s interesting the stuff that they focused on getting right – like every single shirt and fleece they had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own." The critics didn't have as many complaints, nor did the Academy, which nominated it for eight Oscars, winning three. The CEO of Meta probably won't be happy to hear that Aaron Sorkin is working on a sequel, 'The Social Reckoning,' which he will also direct, with Jeremy Strong playing Zuckerberg. In this case, the source material will be the documents known as ‘The Facebook Files’, written by Jeff Horwitz for ‘The Wall Street Journal’, which demonstrated the role of the social network in spreading misinformation and its harmful effect on teenagers. With that in mind, it doesn't look like it will be among Mark Zuckerberg's favorite movies either. Rick Friedman (Corbis via Getty Images)

Few films have had the ability to upset so many people as 'Nina' (2016): audiences, critics, family members, and fans. Even Zoe Saldaña, the actress who played the singer, ended up disowning her work. The main problem was precisely the choice of Saldaña as the lead, but knowing that an executive once suggested that Julia Roberts play the Black activist Harriet Tubman, it's not too surprising that Hollywood wanted to take advantage of the box office pull of the actress from ‘Avatar’ and ‘Star Trek’, even though there was nothing about her that remotely resembled Nina Simone.

That was what most offended the singer's heirs, and they let the actress know on social media. “Please don't ever mention Nina's name again,” someone wrote to Saldaña. The controversy stemmed from the fact that while Simone was of African descent, Saldaña is Afro-Caribbean, meaning her skin tone is significantly lighter. The singer's heirs emphasized that Simone's skin tone and physical appearance, far removed from the canons of classical beauty, had been a hindrance to her career. In fact, Saldaña was forced to wear dark makeup, false teeth, and a prosthetic nose. “It's not the way you want your loved ones to be remembered,” lamented the singer's daughter. Tom Copi

Eight years later, Zoe Saldaña confessed that she regretted accepting the role and acknowledged that it should have gone to a Black woman. “I should never have played Nina,” she confessed to 'Bese' magazine. "I should have done everything possible; the influence I had 10 years ago was different, but it was influence nonetheless. I should have done everything in my power to cast a Black woman to play an exceptionally perfect Black woman," she said.Jeff Kravitz (FilmMagic)

In 2010, Sandra Bullock won the Oscar ahead of nominees such as Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren, a surprising but not entirely undeserved victory that came, as is often the case, for a dramatic role, something unusual in a career full of comedies. But the Academy loves tears and true stories like the one told in John Lee Hancock's tear-jerker 'The Blind Side.' It's a story of personal triumph, that of former NFL player Michael Oher, who was adopted as a child by a wealthy white family that lifted him out of poverty and helped him make it to the NFL and succeed. Bullock won the Oscar and the film did well at the box office, but Oher was not very satisfied with the final result, as he felt that too many elements of his real life, including his intelligence, had been blurred. Icon Sports Wire (Corbis/Icon Sportswire via Getty)

“It portrayed me as dumb instead of as a kid who had never had consistent academic instruction and ended up thriving once he got it,” he later wrote in his memoir, 'I Beat The Odds.' The film, an ode to the controversial figure of the white savior, focused more on the supposedly selfless work of the Tuhoys, especially the matriarch, played by Bullock, than on the football player. Years later, the story took a new turn when Oher presented documents proving that he had never actually been adopted and that the Tuohy family had tricked him into signing a guardianship agreement shortly before he turned 18, which generated substantial profits for them. mptvimages.com (Ralph Nelson)

The relationship between Baywatch star Pamela Anderson and Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee was the talk of the town from the start, due to their fame and their hasty wedding. They married just 96 hours after meeting, and their romance was as turbulent as might be expected. That whirlwind start to their love story is the focus of the Disney+ series 'Pam & Tommy,' released in 2022 and starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan, in which the sex tape recorded by the couple in their private life plays a prominent role. It ended up being made public after an extravagant robbery at their mansion by the builders they had hired to renovate it and whom Lee had fired. Disney+

Unhappy, one of them broke into the house and stole the safe containing not only weapons, money, and jewelry, but also the videotape. The public release of this material was a devastating blow to Anderson, and her friend Courtney Love referred to this emotional blow when the series premiered. "It destroyed my friend Pamela's life. Utterly... And shame on Lily James whoever the f– she is.“ Anderson spoke about the issue on the occasion of the release of the Netflix documentary 'Pamela, A Love Story.' She said she had nothing against James, but rather against the creators of a series she considered a ”violation." “How can they be allowed to do that?” she wondered. In an interview with 'Variety,' she also pointed out that they had never contacted her. She called it "devastating" and said those responsible were “assholes” whom she demanded a public apology from, which she has not received.Steve.Granitz (WireImage)

Brittany Murphy was one of the most promising stars of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Her career was short, but she had time to demonstrate her extraordinary comic talent in 'Clueless' and her dramatic skills in films such as '8 Mile' and 'Girl, Interrupted.' But it was her death at the age of just 32 that caused the most controversy, due both to her fame and the fact that her partner died only five months later. The proximity of the two deaths sparked all kinds of theories: there was talk of drugs, murder, the mafia, and toxic mold. The Los Angeles coroner's office debunked all the conspiracy theories: pneumonia aggravated by a severe iron deficiency and poisoning caused by addiction to various prescription drugs, it said.

The Lifetime network, which specializes in TV movies and quick-turnaround products that capitalize on hot news stories, hastily produced 'The Brittany Murphy Story,' a biopic that was not authorized by the family. It was produced in 16 days on a shoestring budget and was met with total rejection by the actress's father: "I am disgusted and outraged that Lifetime decided to produce such a trashy project, defiling the memory of my beautiful, talented daughter,” he told 'The Examiner.' “Frankly, I am surprised they had the nerve to call it ‘a true story’ without doing any research or consulting with any family members. ‘The Brittany Murphy Story’ is an offense to everything my daughter was in real life. It’s hideous, unauthorized and completely untrue.” The actress and singer's father was not only critical of the telefilm's storyline, but also of the casting, which he described as atrocious. The critics didn't treat it very kindly either. “There are amateur pornos made at a higher quality. There are Chihuahuas wearing better, more believable wigs,” declared 'Vulture.' Jon Kopaloff (FilmMagic)

It was impossible for fiction not to take an interest in a monarchy as glamorous as Monaco's, and in 2014 it was Hollywood star Nicole Kidman who stepped into the shoes of another Hollywood star, Grace Kelly, who before becoming the matriarch of the Grimaldis was one of Hitchcock's most fascinating blondes. The period depicted in 'Grace,' the film by French director Olivier Dahan, is the moment when, after giving up her successful acting career to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco, Alfred Hitchcock offered her a return to the cinema to star in Marnie. Alongside Kidman were Frank Langella, Parker Posey, and Spain's Paz Vega, but the prominence of those involved did not diminish the royal family's anger, which even asked photographers not to take pictures of Nicole Kidman or the rest of the team during their walk down the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival. ©Weinstein Company/Courtesy Everett Collection (©Weinstein Company/Courtesy Everett Coll / Everett Collection / Cordon Press)

The couple's three children, Caroline, Stéphanie and Albert, signed a statement discrediting the film. “It cannot under any circumstances be classified as a biopic,” they claimed. “The trailer appears to be a farce and confirms the totally fictional nature of this film. It reinforces the certainty, left after reading the script, that this production, a page of the Principality's history, is based on erroneous and dubious historical references.” They also distanced themselves from the story, which they considered to be distorted, and said that their "history has been misappropriated for purely commercial purposes."Evening Standard (Getty Images)