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Stars Playing Stars: 10 Amazing Biopic Performances

Published on Wednesday, January 11 2012
Written by Katie Marzullo

This Awards Season, the ballots are awash in performances from actors taking on real-life characters. “Biopic” is the buzz word going into the Oscars race, and, indeed, any actor who decides to step into the shoes of a well-known public figure runs the risk of an armful of hardware more often than not.

I’ve ranted before about how I feel the Oscars should have a separate acting category for biopics, because too often it seems they hand out awards to actors simply for doing a very good impression of people with memorable public personas (i.e.: Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote, Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn, Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, etc, etc, the list goes on). It doesn’t seem fair to those other actors who take the time and effort to create a fictional character entirely from scratch. How much imagination does it take to effect Kate Hepburn’s New England drawl and famous tics? No offense to Cate Blanchett, but I would have rather seen her earn an Oscar for her astounding work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button rather than for something any “SNL” regular could pull off in a given week.

Still, though, there are those actors who are so inordinately gifted that, even when cast in a biopic, they are able to make the role completely their own, embodying the person so completely that, even if they lack a physical resemblance, you completely believe it; or, conversely, even if they are the spitting image of their real-life counterpart, their performance is so complete that it almost feels like you’re watching a documentary.

One thing is almost certain – someone is going to win an Oscar in 2012 for playing a real person. It might be Michelle Williams (Marilyn Monroe), or Meryl Streep (Margaret Thatcher), or Leonardo DiCaprio (J. Edgar Hoover). Biopics are instant awards fodder. So, in the spirit of this trend, here’s a list of my 10 favorite biopic performances of all time!

 

Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman in Man On The Moon (1999)

(pictured above)

Full disclosure: I was never a fan of Andy Kaufman, and I am lukewarm at best when it comes to Jim Carrey. But put this story into the skilled hands of director Milos Foreman, and you have one of those most effective and moving biopics ever. Carrey’s resemblance to Kaufman was minimal at best, but he ate, slept, and breathed that character the entire duration of filming, and it paid off big time. During any one of Carrey’s close-ups, you can look in his eyes and just SEE that he IS Kaufman – or, at least, his interpretation of him. You completely forget you’re watching the same actor who is known for contorting his face in Ace Ventura and Dumb and Dumber. And it’s mesmerizing.

 

Judy Davis as Judy Garland in Me and My Shadows (2001)

 

 

Right off the bat, you can see the resemblance, but could this shy Australian actress pull off the role of one of the biggest Hollywood icons of all time? Her two previous Oscar nominations say, “Hell to the yes.” Not only was Davis able to embody Garland’s well-known physical quirks, but the off-stage portrayal of the troubled star was nothing short of heartbreaking. Under those golden Garland pipes was a truly shattered woman, and what we might not have seen in real-life, Davis showed us on screen in this made-for-TV movie, for which she won no less than six major awards (including the Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG)!

 

James Franco as James Dean in James Dean (2001)

 

 

To this day, I can’t look at Franco without seeing Dean. Prior to this film, the most Franco was known for his role on the extremely short-lived NBC dramedy, “Freaks and Geeks”... which I never watched, so James Dean was the first thing I ever saw Franco in. Again, here we have a situation where the resemblance is unmistakable, but you have to wonder if the chops are as formidable. Well, given what we know about Franco these days, it’s little wonder he was able to pull it off so fantastically. Like Dean, Franco is a bit of an enigma – everything with him is completely ambiguous, from his supposed passion for education to his debatable sexuality. Such was the case with Dean; the only discernable difference is, Franco seems far less tortured and emotionally unstable than his 1950s counterpart. While Franco goes with the flow of life, Dean pushed it to the limits... and wound up dead at 24. But it’s their real-life similarities that made Franco seemingly raise Dean from the grave in this film.

 

Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest (1981)

 

 

Okay, this might be a controversial entry, but hear me out! No, this performance nor this film could ever be mistaken for Oscar material, but if we’re talking about actors who so completely morph into their character as to almost seem possessed by them, then you gotta give props to Ms. Dunaway (and her cheekbones) for her over-the-top portrayal of Golden Age movie star Joan Crawford. In Dunaway’s defense, at a certain point, Crawford sort of became her own worst enemy, a caricature of herself that eventually became rather frightening – those shoulders, those lips, those eyebrows! Yikes! And if the stories are to be believed, Dunaway’s performance as the perpetually dramatic diva was pretty much on point. No doubt about it, Crawford was an amazing actress... one of my faves, in fact. But it came at a price. The woman was kind of out of her mind. The truth hurts, and sometimes the truth is made into a movie that drag queens everywhere can quote verbatim. C’est la vie!

 

Jessica Lange as Frances Farmer in Frances (1982)

 

 

Another early-‘80s flick about another old school actress gone wacko... except this one got some Oscars and Golden Globes cred. These days, we all know Jessica Lange as a highly-respected older actress currently creeping us the hell out in “American Horror Story.” However, to give this entry a little context, prior to this role, Lange was primarily known as the dumb blonde sexpot, having played the role to perfection in King Kong, All That Jazz, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Tootsie. She played it so well, in fact, she even got an Oscar for it (for Tootsie). Then, Frances was released, and so was Lange’s inner Serious Actress. Another Oscar under her belt later, and I think it’s safe to say that Frances Farmer was Lange’s ticket to Legit Town. Once more, the resemblance to Farmer is uncanny, but it’s Lange’s ability to submerge herself so deeply into the psyche of this tragic, outspoken actress (who was institutionalized multiple times and even, it is rumored, subjected to a lobotomy) that makes it so unforgettable.

 

Martin Landau as Bela Legosi in Ed Wood (1994)

 

 

Ed Wood was only the second collabo between the dynamic duo of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, and, like all of their joint efforts, it’s Depp who comes out smelling like a rose the most. What most people don’t seem to remember is, it was Martin Landau who actually won an Oscar for his portrayal of the aging Bela Lugosi in this camp classic! Here we have a situation where, if Landau had only been content doing a satirical impersonation of the very impersonatable Dracula star (upon which every Dracula Halloween costume since 1931 is based), we all would have been okay with that. This movie was, after all, sort of a farce. However, here comes Landau, not only armed with a spot-on Hungarian accent that we so deeply associate with Legosi, but he actually gave the man a personality as well! In my opinion, Landau outshines Depp at every turn, making our hearts break for this defeated old man who was once a star like no other but then forgotten in a haze of bad decisions and drugs. We remember Legosi as a monster; Landau made him a human.

 

David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)

 

 

Edward R. Murrow was the voice of a generation, a broadcast journalist who started on the radio and then moved to television in the 1950s and remained there until the 1960s, after his outspokenness against the anti-Communist witch hunts in Washington got him ousted. However, in his brief stint on the boob tube and, before that, on the radio, he became so ingrained in the public consciousness that any actor willing to take on the role of someone so enmeshed with pop culture had an unenviable task ahead of him. But seasoned character actor Strathairn, along with director George Clooney, made the shrewd decision to steer away from the public persona and focus on a man who was trying desperately to be the rational voice in a world gone mad with paranoia. And since Strathairn is good in everything, he approaches this role with the same cool, methodical expertise that makes him one of the most reliable actors in the biz. He was nominated for an Oscar for this role but, sadly, lost out to Philip Seymour Hoffman... for Capote. (*scowl*)

 

Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees (1942)

 

 

What we have here was a masterstroke in casting – not only did Cooper look just like baseball great Lou Gehrig, but he also embodied that same charming “aw shucks” persona that made both actor and athlete so popular in their days. It was an utter serendipitous marriage of performer with character; so much so that Gary Cooper’s recreation of Gehrig’s famous “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech is almost as memorable as the real thing! Pride of the Yankees is one of those perfect sports movies that is able to combine the game with the personalities behind it. Coop was nominated for an Oscar but lost to another biopic performance – James Cagney’s song-and-dance potrayal of George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy.

 

Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003)

 

 

It takes more than a little make-up and gaining a couple pounds to make an outstanding movie performance, but a lot of times, it sure don’t hurt! either Charlize Theron, who, at that point, was ready to do just about anything to get her Oscar, allowed herself to be made over to look like white trash serial killer Aileen Wuornos in this indie flick. Physical transformation aside, you can’t argue that Theron really pulled out all the stops on this one. She was truly unappealing but also remarkably captivating. At the time, even with Oscar in hand, many people turned their nose up at the performance, calling it too over-the-top. Those people had obviously never seen the real Wuornos in action. You don’t end up killing seven people by being a stable, productive member of society. The woman was bat-shiz out of her mind and, frankly, terrifying. Theron actually pulled off a small miracle in making Wuornos seem redeemable. For that alone, she deserved the Oscar. It is a shame, though, that she didn’t even mention Wuornos in her acceptance speech. A means to an end, I guess...

 

Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010)

 

 

Here we have a unique situation where the actor and the real-life persona seem miles away from each other. Nobody could ever in a million years get Jesse Eisenberg confused with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, even if you tilt your head and squint. The only thing that could possibly bring these two to common ground is their shared social awkwardness (displayed to perfection on an episode of “Saturday Night Live”). But given the mysteriousness surrounding the notoriously reclusive Zuckerberg at the time, Eisenberg had sort of a blank canvas to work with, creating an entirely original character out of the merest bits and pieces and turning it into one of the most fascinating performances ever caught on celluloid.

 

And there you have it. What biopic performances strike YOUR fancy?

 

- Katie Marzullo, YH Staff Editor

@YHKatie