The 15 worst biopics of all time

Written and directed by Andrew Dominik, Blonde is a fictionalized take on Marilyn Monroe’s life that polarized critics. Although Ana de Armas was almost universally praised for her raw, transformative performance as Monroe, the exploitative NC-17 film focused on the myriad indignities and tragedies the blonde bombshell endured before her untimely end. There are many conspiracies floating around about what led to Monroe’s ultimate fate, and Blonde muddies the waters even further. De Armas received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but the film was also nominated for eight Razzies, winning Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay.

Clint Eastwood directed J. Edgar, a 2011 biographical drama about the life of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hoover from his lean and trim 20s to a fat-suited man in his 70s, and many critics commented that the makeup effects are laughable even as they mildly praised DiCaprio’s performance. The movie hints at homosexual tension between Hoover and FBI official Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), but nothing interesting comes of it nor anything deeper about Hoover’s personal life. Yeah, Hoover was at the FBI for a lot of infamous investigations and events, but everything surrounding him seems more interesting than the man after whom the movie is titled. Who was J. Edgar Hoover, really? The truth is out there ... just not in this messy biopic.

The Greatest Showman is a highly fictionalized biographical musical drama about P.T. Barnum, the entertainer and showman behind the Barnum & Bailey Circus. The flashy production directed by Michael Gracey stars Hugh Jackman—a man who never met a musical he didn’t like—as Barnum, a man portrayed in this film as a dreamer who wants to be accepted in polite society. No matter how you feel in general about movies with song-and-dance numbers, even Broadway fanatics have to admit that The Greatest Showman barely scratches the surface of who Barnum was. Between all of the cheese, corn, spectacle, and singing you might expect in a movie about a circus, you don’t learn much about what inspires Barnum except a compulsion to playfully exploit outcasts and misfits. Step right up?

Disgraced actor Kevin Spacey starred, directed, cowrote, and coproduced 2004’s Beyond The Sea, a biopic about singer-actor Bobby Darin. Although some people praised Spacey for using his own singing voice, it was pretty embarrassing to watch the Oscar winner—who was about 45 at the time of the film’s release—dance around as the 22-year-old teen idol who released “Splish Splash” in 1958. Maybe if Spacey had made the movie 20 years earlier it would have felt more authentic, but even suspension of disbelief couldn’t prevent this superficial vanity project from tanking at the box office.

The Messenger: The Story Of Joan Of Arc reteams The Fifth Element director Luc Besson with star Milla Jovovich for a historical biopic about the patron saint of France and her role as a warrior and religious martyr during the Hundred Years’ War. Not only are there scenes that are completely fabricated (Joan never witnessed her sister’s murder and posthumous rape by English soldiers), the movie tries to inject humor in a narrative that doesn’t ask for it. Model-turned-actress Jovovich was engaging in The Fifth Element, but here she seems out of her element as the iconic Joan of Arc and, for her efforts, she was nominated for a Worst Actress Razzie.

Naomi Watts is an Oscar-nominated actress who bears a slight resemblance to Diana, Princess of Wales, but her talent is wasted in the 2013 biopic Diana, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel and based upon the last two years of Diana’s life. Critics trashed the movie written by Stephen Jeffreys as feeling like a sordid TV melodrama. David Edwards of The Mirror wrote that “Wesley Snipes in a blonde wig would be more convincing” than Watts, who was nominated for a Worst Actress Razzie for one of the most disappointing roles in her otherwise impressive career.

No, we’re not talking about the 2007 fantasy film Stardust starring Michelle Pfeiffer as a witch, but you can choose to believe that’s a biopic if it makes you happy. Instead, the Stardust in question is the 2020 biopic about David Bowie starring Johnny Flynn as the late musical legend circa 1971 during the creation of his Ziggy Stardust persona. Flynn looks like someone in a Halloween Bowie costume and comes across as boring—something the real Bowie never was. This biopic, directed by Gabriel Range, is a huge letdown with The A.V. Club referring to it as “velvet garbage.” Watch the 2022 documentary Moonage Daydream instead for a look at the real Starman.

All Eyez On Me is a 2017 biopic about rapper Tupac Shakur and the film is named after his 1996 album. The movie, directed by Benny Boom, stars Demetrius Shipp Jr., who bears a resemblance to Shakur, but that resemblance is only skin deep. The movie has been praised for accurately re-creating the clothing Shakur wore, but Shipp Jr. lacks the charisma that made Tupac a rap legend. All Eyez On Me got dissed by critics and quickly disappeared from theaters and our collective memories, unlike the music of the real-life Shakur.

Goodness, gracious ... Dennis Quaid plays rockabilly pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis in the 1989 biopic Great Balls Of Fire!, which divided critics. Some praised Quaid’s “crackerjack” performance, while many noticed that the movie shied away from the darker elements of Lewis’ life to create a cleaned-up, more palatable rock-and-roll biography, even though the movie poster boasted that Lewis was “born to raise hell.” Lewis reportedly said that he hated the film and the book upon which it is based, but did say that Quaid “really pulled it off” and complimented the actor on learning how to play Lewis-style piano for the movie.

The 1989 biopic Wired starred Michael Chiklis as actor-comedian John Belushi, one of the original Saturday Night Live cast members. The critical response to Wired wasn’t just negative, it was downright hostile, calling it an “unintentional parody” of Belushi’s troubled life. Leonard Maltin said that Wired was “the film fiasco of its year” and “mind-numbingly wrongheaded.” Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club said, “To call Wired an unconscionable act of grave robbery/defilement would be an insult to the good name of grave-robbers everywhere. There are snuff films with more integrity.” Chiklis, whose career eventually recovered, told James Belushi years later that he took the role out of “love, respect, and homage” for John and apologized for upsetting any members of the family.

Oliver Stone’s Alexander stars Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great, the king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. We had no idea that peroxide was so readily available in 285 B.C., but the film’s historical inaccuracies go beyond Farrell’s Miss Clairol locks. Some have noted that Alexander’s homosexual tendencies are blown way out of proportion, while others have pointed out the depictions of Persians, and Easterners in general, to be straight-up wrong. There are four versions of the movie floating around but none of them seemed to impress critics or historians. Alexander was nominated for six Razzies in 2005—including Worst Actor and Worst Director—but didn’t “win” any.

The 2013 biographical drama Jobs follows Apple CEO/cult leader Steve Jobs from his college days to the debut of the iPod in 2001. As you might expect from a movie starring That ’70s Show actor Ashton Kutcher, it has the by-the-numbers feel of a TV biopic. Jobs seems to transform from a brat to a cutting-edge entrepreneur overnight in Jobs, so some important details have been omitted in this movie directed by Joshua Michael Stern. Critics largely dismissed Jobs as a lightweight biopic with numerous historical inaccuracies. Whereas Apple zealots will still line up and buy any new device Apple issues a press release for, the same cannot be said for movies about the company’s cofounder.

Everything about the 2016 biopic Nina about singer Nina Simone comes down to casting, and, wow, did the filmmakers blow it. The casting of Afro-Latina star Zoe Saldaña was controversial, especially to Simone Kelly, the daughter of Simone, who said, “My mother was raised at a time when she was told her nose was too wide, her skin was too dark. Appearance-wise this is not the best choice.” Saldaña later admitted that she regretted taking the role in the critically panned movie, saying, “I should have never played Nina. I should have done everything in my power, with the leverage that I had 10 years ago ... to cast a Black woman to play an exceptionally perfect Black woman.”

To say that John Wayne—who became an icon playing cowboys—was grossly miscast as Mongol leader Genghis Khan in 1956’s The Conqueror would be the understatement of the century. Not only did Wayne receive a posthumous Golden Turkey Award in the Worst Casting category, the epic historical drama is considered one of the worst films ever made. Even more egregious than the racially insensitive casting is the fact that The Conqueror was filmed downwind from a nuclear testing site in Utah, which may be the reason why a large number of the cast and crew developed cancer afterwards. Talk about box office poison!

It’s challenging to find a movie rocking a 0 percent rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes, but Gotti nailed it. The 2018 biographical crime drama directed by Entourage actor Kevin Connolly stars a bewigged John Travolta as New York City mobster John Gotti. The movie was ridiculed for portraying Gotti as a loving family man who only killed for the good of the community. Really? It took eight years, four directors, and 44 producers to make what the New York Post called “the worst mob movie of all time,” which was nominated for six Razzies.