Updated February 24, 2020 5.7k votes 875 voters 22.6k views
List RulesVote up the best biographical films about singers and musicians
There are tons of music biopics, but which are the best? This list includes popular movies about real musicians and singers, like What’s Love Got To Do With It, Why Do Fools Fall In Love?, Walk the Line, and La Bamba. Films have the ability to make us feel. They make us want to believe, be inspired, and live vicariously through the stories we see on screen. Music and musicians has have a similar ability, and we often feel connected to our favorite rock stars, making movies about their lives all the more enchanting.
Films that tell the story of Tina Turner, Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, and Ray Charles all tell tales that are fascinating, tumultuous, and likely more violent than our own. It is with a peek into the lives of these individuals that we can understand their motives, and thus their art, that much better. These movies vary in their genre but are all equally fascinating.
Vote up the best rock star biopics below or add one that you think is great but isn't already on the list.
Walk the Line is a 2005 American biographical drama film directed by James Mangold and based on the early life and career of country music artist Johnny Cash. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix, Reese ...more
Legendary soul musician Ray Charles is portrayed by Jamie Foxx in this Oscar-winning biopic. Young Ray watches his 7-year-old brother drown at age seven. When he loses his sight at the age of 9, his ...more
Raised in rural Kentucky poverty and married at the age of 13, Loretta Lynn (Sissy Spacek) begins writing and singing her own country songs in her early 20s. With the tireless help of her husband ...more
Based on the life of the legendary soul singer, Tina Turner (Angela Bassett) -- born Anna Mae Bullock -- discovers her love of singing in her Tennessee church choir. She moves to St. Louis to pursue ...more
Los Angeles teenager Ritchie Valens (Lou Diamond Phillips) becomes an overnight rock 'n' roll success in 1958, thanks to a love ballad called "Donna" that he wrote for his girlfriend (Danielle von ...more
After a psychedelic experience in the California desert, Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer), lead singer of The Doors, and his bandmates begin performing in Los Angeles and quickly become a sensation. ...more
A chronicle of the rise and brief career of rock 'n' roll star Buddy Holly (Gary Busey), who aspires to play music the way he wants it to sound. Holly and his band, the Crickets, are first invited to ...more
Amadeus is a 1984 American period biographical drama film directed by Miloš Forman and adapted by Peter Shaffer from his 1979 stage play Amadeus. The story is set in Vienna, Austria during the latter ...more
In 1988, a groundbreaking new group revolutionizes music and pop culture, changing and influencing hip-hop forever. N.W.A's first studio album, "Straight Outta Compton," stirs controversy with its ...more
Freddie Mercury -- the lead singer of Queen -- defies stereotypes and convention to become one of history's most beloved entertainers. The band's revolutionary sound and popular songs lead to Queen's ...more
The people of Detroit know 8 Mile as the city limit, a border, a boundary. It is also a psychological dividing line that separates Jimmy Smith Jr. (Eminem) from where and who he wants to be. A ...more
The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical drama film produced and directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The film is an adaptation of the 1959 Broadway ...more
Rocketman is a 2019 British-American biographical musical film directed by Dexter Fletcher. The life of Elton John (Taron Egerton) is tracked from his years as a prodigy at the Royal Academy of Music ...more
In the late 1960s, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson stops touring, produces "Pet Sounds" and begins to lose his grip on reality. By the 1980s, Wilson (John Cusack), under the sway of a controlling ...more
Upstart rock 'n' roll singer Jerry Lee Lewis (Dennis Quaid) has just cut a record at Sun Studio. Jerry's cousin, pastor Jimmy Swaggart (Alec Baldwin), tries to steer him away from a depraved life in
The Temptations is a four-hour television miniseries broadcast in two-hour halves on NBC, based upon the history of one of Motown's longest-lived acts, The Temptations. Executive produced by former ...more
In this biographical drama, Selena Quintanilla (Jennifer Lopez) is born into a musical Mexican-American family in Texas. Her father, Abraham (Edward James Olmos), realizes that his young daughter is ...more
In the 1960s, four scrappy young men from New Jersey -- Frankie Valli (John Lloyd Young), Bob Gaudio (Erich Bergen), Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) and Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) -- have the magic ...more
James Brown (Chadwick Boseman) was born in extreme poverty in 1933 South Carolina and survived abandonment, abuse and jail to become one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He ...more
Green Book is a 2018 comedy-drama film directed by Peter Farrelly. A bouncer (Viggo Mortensen) at a New York nightclub takes a job as a pianist's (Mahershala Ali) chauffeur during a tour in the Deep ...more
In this adaptation of the autobiography "The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945," Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a Polish Jewish radio station ...more
In 1947 Chicago, Polish emigrant and bar owner Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody) hires a blues combo that includes guitarist Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright) and harmonica player Little Walter (Columbus ...more
Sid and Nancy is a 1986 British biopic directed by Alex Cox. The film portrays the life of Sid Vicious, and his relationship with girlfriend Nancy Spungen. Despite failing to recoup its production ...more
Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), two rebellious teenagers from Southern California, become the frontwomen for the Runaways -- the now-legendary group that paved the way ...more
Born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Christopher Wallace (Jamal Woolard) parlays his gift for storytelling into a career as a rap artist. Eventually dubbing himself Biggie Smalls, then later, the ...more
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