There's nothing the movie industry loves more than a true story. You can pour over comic books or jet off into space all you want, but few things can match just how crazy the real world can get.
This naturally creates a problem that can be less of an issue in totally made up movies; authenticity. There's an added pressure to make period dressing accurate and, rather than picking an actor based on a character description and maybe a concept sketch, the film's team have to cast someone can at least skew moderately close to a fully existing person.
Sometimes you may see a real person actually play themselves. United 93 had various people, most prolifically FAA National Operations Manager Ben Sliney, cast as themselves in a recreation of the September 11 terrorist attacks. That's not really feasible much of the time, with various tricks used to get a faithful representation.
What's most common nowadays are feel-alike castings. Getting a total look-alike can be tricky and if not boasting a good performance with it can appear gimmicky. Getting a great actor, making them look a little like the person but letting their performance be the real selling point is the way to go. Of course, this can lead to some people with an on screen counterpart that looks nothing like them. Today we bring you fifteen of those people.
15. Frank Abagnale, Jr. - Catch Me If You Can
Frank Abagnale, Jr. was an incredibly adept con man, successfully forging cheques and posing as important personnel for a period of almost ten years. One thing he wasn't is a heartthrob. Which makes it strange that Leonardo DiCaprio was cast as him in a biopic of his misadventures.
Catch Me If You Can is a cracking caper from Steven Spielberg often lost in his incredibly strong filmography. And it's obvious why the incredibly talented DiCaprio plays Abagnale - although he is clearly a serious criminal there's enough like-ability to care for him. There's not much of physical resemblance between the two, however; we can't see Abagnale front-lining the then-biggest movie of all time.
This is far from the only inaccuracy in a film which has some major moments purely dreamt up by the film-makers; many events were less dramatic in real life and the emotional beat of Frank reuniting with his father is totally fabricated. With this in mind its hard to get too hung up on the lack of resemblance.
14. Tony Mendez - Argo
Remember that movie when Ben Affleck was cast as someone he looks nothing alike? No, not Batman; he's totally suited for Bruce Wayne. We're taking about when he cast himself as CIA officer Tony Mendez in his own Argo. Based on recently declassified documents, Argo tells the 'true' story of the Canadian Caper, a successful rescue of six US nationals during the Iranian hostage crisis achieved by posing a film crew, with Mendez the unsung architect of the whole thing.
The real Mendez looked as nondescript as you'd expect a technical operations officer to look, but Affleck's version is the Hollywood version of run-down; good looks, nicely kept hair, but with a beard.
For all its enlightenment, Argo presented a rather one-sided view on events, so really not seeing Affleck with a moustache is far from the film's biggest crime to accuracy. People were probably so surprised that he really suited directing that the acting fell by the wayside.
13. Jordan Belfort - The Wolf Of Wall Street
Another film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a morally questionable real life person that got people in a tizzy over whether it was glamorising the lifestyle or not. Of course, if you sit through the hilarious latest from Martin Scorsese it should be obvious that, with the protagonist reduced to a drug-addled mess who beats up his wife, that The Wolf Of Wall Street is being rather condemning of fraudulent stockbroker Jordan Belfort's actions.
According to the man himself the film was pretty accurate to his antics, with some of the drug taking actually toned down lest the whole thing looked too ridiculous.
One place where the film isn't totally accurate is in how its characters look. Don't get us wrong, the casting was spot on, but in terms of basic looks none of the main cast (aside from Margot Robbie as Nadine Belfort) look much like their real life counterparts. Although if anything that's testament to the quality of the acting on show; they more than made up for not being a visual fit.
12. Jim Lovell - Apollo 13
Throughout his illustrious career Tom Hanks has played all manner of real life people, with varying degrees of actual likeness. He was a spot on doppelgänger of the titular hero in Captain Phillips and his Walt Disney was more in-keeping with the animation giant than anyone expected.
It's not always as perfect, which is most prominent in his casting as Jim Lovell in Apollo 13. He bears little resemblance to him, with Hanks looking decidedly younger than Lovell did in 1970 (despite him being a similar age). The same goes for the rest of the crew of the titular mission that went horribly wrong; Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon (and Gary Sinise) are great actors but certainly don't look like their character's inspirations.
This is, however, a film by Ron Howard, who, when he's on full cylinders, can't be beaten in his ability to turn potentially dry real life events into tense spectacle. Keeping the focus on the characters (see also, Rush), any physical discrepancies are made negligible by allowing for a well-rounded performance; it's his movies that really excel at that feel-alike style.
11. King George VI - The King's Speech
"A British monarch must overcome his speech impediment" doesn't seem like the most enticing synopsis for a movie, but with some solid casting and a script that balanced character and royal matters The King's Speech became a smash hit, dominating the Oscars and making a nice box office haul.
Central to the film's success is Colin Firth's turn as George VI, the titular King, who not only has a lifelong affliction to deal with, but the horror of being unexpectedly thrust into the role of Head of State. This film amps up the noticeability of his speech impediment at points (the actual speech doesn't have as protracted gaps), but despite that his development all feels very internal. Firth really gets the voice down (who knew he could do posh), but where he's weaker is the look; the resemblance to the real Bertie is fleeting.
Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush aren't dead ringers for the Queen Mother and Lionel Logue respectively, but they cut it closer than Firth.
10. Henry Hill - Goodfellas
Goodfellas is, and probably will remain given how all subsequent movies in the genre have just copied it, the greatest gangster film of all time (sorry Godfather). Telling the real life rise and fall of street-level mobster Henry Hill, Martin Scorsese's movie was quick on the draw, coming out only four years after Nicholas Pileggi's book based on Hill's exloits was published.
Spanning decades, the film feels incredibly authentic; not only giving a proper insight into the structure of the New York crime scene, it presents the passage of time perfectly with its set design and the director's typically spot-on music choice. The only place the film doesn't have the authenticity is in its central role; Ray Liotta may deliver a career best performance as Henry, but boy does he look nothing like the real guy.
The other actors cast in the film, particularly Robert De Niro as Jimmy Conway (in real life his surname was Burke), all look much more in keeping with their real life counterparts.
9. Richard Kuklinski - The Iceman
From Goodfellas to one of its many inferior imitators. The Iceman is the story of Richard Kuklinski, a contract killer who allegedly killed hundreds of people (amazingly he was ultimately only convicted on three murders), although the film seems to grossly misunderstand the appeal.
Turning the origins of Kuklinski's nickname into one of the film's central driving forces (in reality it was because he froze his victims so the police wouldn't know when the murder occurred, but the film throws out a multitude of different reasons), the film was fundamentally flawed in the casting of Michael Shannon. Proving himself as a competent character actor in the likes of Revolutionary Road, he's not the right fit for the role.
Here not looking like the real person is central to the issue; the intriguing part of the whole story is that Kuklinski hid his murderous secret life behind a veil of a family life. Shannon doesn't look like Kuklinski, sure, but neither does he look domesticated enough for the lack of resemblance to be justified.
8. Jesus Christ - The Passion Of Christ
The contention over Jesus' existence and the actions he committed if he was real is something we're not even going to vaguely deal with. For the sake of this article, let's go with the basic situation where he was some guy from Nazareth.
The conventional depiction of Jesus is as a white guy with a big beard and long hair. Now while he may have gone for the unkept combo, he most certainly wouldn't have been white. There's no description of him in the Bible (and if there was there's no reason it could have been taken as accurate), but given that he lived in the middle east it would be silly for him not to have dark skin. As Christianity grew in the west, his depiction changed, with some arguing Cesare Borgia even designed the Son of God in his image. And thus every movie depiction of Jesus, even the meticulously planned The Passion of the Christ, is off.
This is something more heavily ingrained in our culture as a whole than just a slight movie miscasting, although why the usually pernickety Mel Gibson didn't go for more authenticity we don't know.
7. Mark Zuckerberg - The Social Network
Quite how much of The Social Network is representative of the actual making of Facebook is up to debate. Various of the people involved - co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, the hard done-by Eduardo Saverin and genius Mark Zuckerberg himself - have all claimed it takes the broad strokes and twists events into a more likeable narrative; the whole issue with the Winklevii was rather inconsequential to many involved.
But we're willing to overlook that because what The Social Network does do, as writer Aaron Sorkin intended, is tell an interesting and entirely modern story well. If they'd followed in the footsteps of Orson Welles and made a film inspired by the truth, but with different characters (a la William Randolph Hearst and Citizen Kane) it would have looked cheap.
Of course, with a slightly loose meaning behind 'based on a true story' there's naturally going to be some differences. Jesse Eisenberg's character not only has a personality rather removed in many ways from real Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, but also looks nothing like him.
6. Oskar Schindler - Schindler's List
If you believe his cameo in the otherwise weak Life's Too Short, Liam Neeson was offered the role of Oskar Schindler because he wrote a lot of lists. We're inclined to take that as a joke (although it didn't make us laugh, we're fairly certain Life's Too Short was meant to be a comedy), although it's as likely a reason as Spielberg casting Neeson because of his actual resemblance to the heroic Nazi.
An opportunistic businessman who saved over a thousand Jews from the Holocaust, Spielberg's movie feels like it hasn't aged a day in the two decades since its release, which was exactly the plan. Treating the subject matter (his darkest) with a eye towards accuracy, Spielberg wanted the film to be totally accurate to real events, almost serving as a documentary.
The only break in this is the casting of Irish Neeson as the German Schindler, although the Oscar nominated performance he subsequently delivered make it a negligible issue. It's worth noting that at the time Neeson was, like co-star Ralph Fiennes, a relative unknown, so much of this difference in look has been exacerbated over time.
5. John Dillinger - Public Enemies
Famed for the realism present in his movies, Michael Mann making a gangster movie set at the height of the Great Depression and centring on the most well known mobster of all, John Dillinger, was an enticing proposition. Public Enemies, which stars Johnny Depp as the notorious outlaw, wasn't quite up to the calibre of the director's Heat, but it was still a solid movie with an impeccable capturing of its time.
Depp's performance as Dillinger was rather overlooked, with all the usual Mann pizazz (shoot-outs, lots of shoot-outs) taking the critical focus. Which is a shame, because it was a pretty good representation of a man endlessly dissected by the press. That is, when he's not trying desperately to actually look like the bank robber.
For much of the marketing campaign and at various points of the film Depp sported the famous smirk from Dillinger's mugshot, turning a show of cockiness into a major personal tic. Whenever that look wasn't on his face, however, the resemblance disappeared.
4. The Belón Family - The Impossible
Upon release, much was made about how The Impossible was focusing on a western family amidst an Asian tragedy (the Boxing Day tsunami), but given how the film put particular effort into contextualising their ordeal it's not much of an issue. What is a bit more irritating is that the film shifted the nationality of the Belón family from Spanish to English.
The Bennetts are played Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts and, in an impressive first appearance, Tom Holland and all give a brilliant turn, with Watts even nominated for an Oscar. That's pretty damn good, but it doesn't take away from the fact the on screen family is nothing like the real life clan.
Obviously altered to make the film play better in the highly profitable American market (using the Spanish family would have led to either contrived reasons to speak English or, shudder, subtitles), it's one of the few marks of studio interferment in Juan Antonio Bayona's impressive English-language debut.
3. Charles Lightoller - A Night To Remember
Charles Lightoller was the Second Officer on the Titanic's maiden voyage and stands as an important man in history for being the highest ranking officer to survive the liners tragic sinking. His account of the disaster proved essential in figuring out what exactly went wrong that night in April 1912, with subsequent dramatisations putting a large focus on him.
His story is pretty amazing; staying on the ship to the last, he was almost sucked under before taking control of an up-turned lifeboat. This often overshadows a more questionable part he played in proceedings. Lightoller was the officer who mistranslated Captain Smith's order of women and children first as women and children only, which may have led to an unknown number of deaths; the lifeboats were released half-full if no more women and children could be found.
Other important players in the disaster are easier to distill a look from (Captain Smith had a big white beard and White Star Line chairman Bruce Ismay sported a fetching moustache), but Lightoller has seen more reinterpretation over the years. The two major performers to play him are Kenneth More in A Night To Remember and Jonathan Phillips in Titanic, but neither have looked that much like him.
2. David Frost - Frost/Nixon
Another case of Ron Howard successfully making a brilliant movie from something that, while interesting, doesn't immediately lend itself to a two hour feature film, Frost/Nixon is the incredible dramatisation of The Nixon Interviews and the events surrounding them. Conducted by a then widely disregarded David Frost, they turned him into a political powerhouse and provide some of the most important moments in American political history.
Michael Sheen is incredible as Frost. In fact, he's so good that you can easily overlook that the similarities between Sheen and the man he's playing are rather superficial; the hair's right, but beyond that you couldn't tell they were the same person. This is testament to Sheen's ability; he's also played Brian Clough and Tony Blair with the same capturing of character despite minimal resemblance.
On the other side of the room there's Richard Nixon. He's a particularly tricky person to get represented on film, with movies having varying success of capturing his distinctive likeness. Frank Langella, who played Nixon opposite Sheen's Frost, stands as one of the stronger ones.
1. Genghis Khan - The Conqueror
All the other vague resemblances pale in comparison to John Wayne in The Conqueror. Widely regarded as one of the worst films ever made, the Howard Hughes' produced historical epic tells the story of Genghis Kahn in laughably bad fashion.
Now why John Wayne was unsuitable for the role should be pretty obvious; he has literally nothing in common with the Chinese Emperor. We may not have much evidence of what the real Temüjin looked like, but we doubt it was like an American cowboy. There's some vague attempt to make Wayne appear more oriental, but it ends up sitting the line between offensive and pointless. The rest of the film was utterly dreadful, but Wayne's Khan being the most remembered element highlights just how much this miscasting (often stated as one of the worst of all time) missed the point.
Originally Hughes wanted Marlon Brando for the role, but, while he has better range than Wayne, we can't see it being much better.
Which other famous roles look nothing like who they were intended to be? Let us know in the comments below.
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