Vote up the positive biopic reactions you're glad to see.
Most people have problems with the way they're portrayed on film - and it's easy to see why. Films are for-profit ventures, which means filmmakers will almost always sacrifice truth for entertainment. As such, many important details are left out - or else fabricated details are put in - to make a film fit a profitable, and often more entertaining, narrative.
For these reasons, so many biopic subjects have publicly trashed their movies that it has come to be expected. Positive accounts exist, though, and it's worth showcasing the few that really did make their subjects happy. Read on to see the glowing reviews about historical figures who loved their biopics.
Henry Hill initially didn't want to see Goodfellas. Having left organized crime, he claimed “the idea of reliving everything again was kind of scary.” Hill worked up the courage to watch the film at a private screening in 1990. He published his review in Premiere magazine:
In Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese captures everything - good and bad - with almost total accuracy. Had I had the opportunity to direct the movie myself - if I knew anything about directing - I don’t think I could have done a better job. All the details are just right. The Brooklyn neighborhood in the movie looks and feels just like my own did.
He went on to praise Robert De Niro and Lorraine Bracco, but he reserved most of the kudos for the actor who played him, Ray Liotta:
I was a little worried about what they'd do with the role. But Marty [Scorsese] obviously knew what he was doing. When I finally saw the movie, I was overjoyed. I could not believe the job that Ray had done. He played me perfectly throughout the movie. That's really the way it was. It's all true.
Actors: Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino
Scores of critics and audiences liked Stephen Hawking's biopic, The Theory of Everything, including Hawking himself. After his first viewing, a nurse reportedly wiped a tear from his eye. Then he called the movie “broadly true," which, coming from a truth-obsessed scientist, the filmmakers took as a huge compliment.
I had to reconcile myself to the compromises that one has to make for the film industry. Stephen’s colleagues all became one character called Brian who is always there as his companion. Sadly, I didn’t seem to have any friends or relations at all.
Actors: Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Charlie Cox
Moneyball dramatizes Billy Beane's then-radical analytical approach to running a baseball team. The real Beane is happy with his portrayal - and flattered by Brad Pitt's involvement:
Once I heard he [Pitt] was doing it… I had a feeling it was going to get done… From the first minute he walked in the locker room… he fit right in. We got a fraternity down there and it's not really accepting to everybody. And within five minutes, he was part of that baseball fraternity.
His favorite part of Pitt's portrayal is the father-daughter relationship. Pitt captured a genuine and special aspect of Beane's family life in those scenes. Even after several viewings, “there is not a time that [that part] does not still choke me up.”
Actors: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, Chris Pratt
Molly's Game could be called Jessica's Movie for how Jessica Chastain nailed her role. But don't take our word for it. Molly Bloom, the real-life gambling mogul whom Chastain portrayed, has had nothing but great things to say about her:
She blew my mind… My family and friends are like, “Oh my god - it’s you!” Jess didn’t have a lot of time to prep for this because she had a lot of projects and we had a short prep time on the movie. So we didn’t hang out that much, but in the time we did, I was like, “I need to be on my best behavior and give her as much as I can.” But she’s so real and disarming that I felt like I was hanging out with a friend. I lost sight that she was even doing her work or processing it. It was just a few times, a few phone calls, and she just went away. I was like, “Wait, doesn’t she need more?” But when I saw her on the screen I was just floored! She’s so brilliant.
127 Hours is the harrowing depiction of Aron Ralston's self-amputation in a Utah canyon. Rare for a biopic, its subject called it “so factually accurate it is as close to a documentary as you can get and still be a drama."
Furthermore, he proclaimed 127 Hours to be“the best film ever made.” When The Guardian reported these feelings in December 2010, Ralston had seen the film eight times and cried during each viewing. The scene of his rescue gets him the most emotional of all.
Actors: James Franco, Amber Tamblyn, Kate Mara, Clémence Poésy, Treat Williams
You may think that watching the most traumatic event of your life sensationalized on the big screen would be a distressing experience, but not for Richard Phillips. After viewing a pre-release version of Captain Phillips, which tells the story of his kidnapping by Somali pirates, Phillips called it “a good action film.”
He wondered how it would affect him, but it didn't do much: “What actually happened was a lot worse than that."
Actors: Tom Hanks, Catherine Keener, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed
