15 Celebrities Who Hated Their Biopics

Biopics are really having a moment right now. While the genre itself is nothing new, biopics seem like an easy way not only to make a lot of money at the box office but to bring home a bunch of trophies during awards season. If you're lucky and/or have the right director at the helm, you can achieve both like with 2023's "Oppenheimer," which grossed close to $1 billion worldwide to become the highest-grossing biopic of all time and took home Best Picture at that year's Academy Awards.

It feels like Hollywood isn't going to let go of this trend anytime soon, and for notable figures who become the subjects of these movies, it's often a chance to have their accomplishments shared with a vast audience. But even if a biopic is largely complimentary, some people just don't like seeing their dirty laundry aired for the world to see. 

There's a reason why many biopics come out after the subject has long passed. Their descendants may have some choice words, but they don't have to see the grittier parts of their lives dramatized. Biopics about more recent subjects have occasionally garnered ire, sometimes for misrepresenting the truth and sometimes for being a bit too truthful. 

Facebook might be helping the downfall of society by making it easy for misinformation to spread to the masses who are susceptible to believing it. With that in mind, it's ironically poetic that Mark Zuckerberg himself isn't happy with David Fincher's "The Social Network" for how it allegedly misrepresents aspects of his life. 

During a 2014 Q&A at Facebook headquarters, Zuckerberg claimed, "I think the reality is that writing code and then building a product and building a company is not a glamorous enough thing to make a movie about, so you can imagine that a lot of this stuff they had to embellish or make up." One aspect of the film that Zuckerberg claimed was false was how he created Facebook to get girls, but he was already dating his future wife, Priscilla Chan, when he was at Harvard. This is accurate, although one scandalous truth of "The Social Network" is that he did create a website called FaceMash to rank Harvard students' attractiveness, which was a separate project yet has gotten wrapped up within the Facebook origin mythos. 

"The Blind Side" attempts to tell the inspirational story of the Tuohy family adopting Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) off the streets and encouraging him to improve his life by playing football, eventually leading to him getting into the NFL. Sandra Bullock won the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal as matriarch Leigh Anne Tuohy, but other than that, everyone else would probably like to forget the film happened since it's been revealed that much of "The Blind Side" was based on a lie. 

The real Oher has come forward to say that in 2023, he discovered the conservatorship the Tuohys put him in (rather than adopting him like the film suggests) allowed them to take much of his money, and they can benefit even further from his likeness. It also doesn't technically make him part of the Tuohy family, which certainly puts the feel-good nature of the film into question. And while the film shows the Tuohys encouraging Oher to pursue football, he was already a top high school football prospect by the time he moved in with the family. 

In the 1990s, a sex tape between "Baywatch" star Pamela Anderson and Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee leaked to the public. It caused an immense amount of trauma for Anderson, which was only compounded by the general public's indifference toward violating a woman's privacy. As such, it makes sense that Anderson has never seen Hulu's "Pam & Tommy" and never will. 

The miniseries creator, Robert Siegel, has stated how he reached out to Anderson to get her involved with the show to some capacity but never heard back. It's clealry not a period of her life she wants to revisit, and when talking with Variety about the people who created the series, the actress said, "Salt on the wound ... You still owe me a public apology." Instead, Anderson focused on controlling her own narrative with a memoir called "Love, Pamela" as well as a Netflix documentary titled "Pamela, A Love Story" where she recounts the rise and fall of her career from her perspective. 

2009's "Notorious" hones in on The Notorious B.I.G., showing his rise to fame and subsequent death at far too young of an age. Even though rapper Lil' Kim, portrayed in the film by Naturi Naughton, isn't the central focus, she does get some scenes that didn't sit well with the real Lil' Kim.

Kim's portrayed as Biggie's affair partner while he's with Faith Evans (Antonique Smith), and Kim had big problems with the actress who played her. On a post to Wendy Williams' blog, Wendyista, Kim's quoted as saying, "I wasn't even able to choose who I wanted to portray me in this movie. I would have never picked Naturi, she doesn't have a Lil' Kim aura at all! She looks nothing like I looked back then. We have NO similarities. Watching her on-screen was so 'dreadful' as Simon Cowell would say." She also claims she didn't appreciate her storyline in the film, insisting it was more than just an affair between the two. 

To her credit, Naughton has taken Lil' Kim's criticisms in stride and has continued to insist it was a pleasure to play her in "Notorious."

The lives and careers of Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur have always been inextricably linked, so it only seems appropriate that a real figure from Shakur's life, in this case, Jada Pinkett Smith, also has an issue with her portrayal in his biopic, 2017's "All Eyez on Me." When the movie came out, Smith posted a series of tweets onto X (formerly Twitter) decrying the film: "Forgive me... my relationship to Pac is too precious to me for the scenes in All Eyez On Me to stand as truth."

She then specified three scenes in the film she claims were fictitious, including ones where Shakur reads her a poem, says goodbye to her before going to Los Angeles, and one where they had an argument backstage. In stark contrast to Lil' Kim, she did remain amicable to the actress who portrayed her, Kat Graham, writing, "To [Graham] and [Demetrius Shipp Jr., who played Shakur] this is no fault of yours. Thank you for bringing so much heart and spirit to your roles."

Christian Bale disappears into the role of Dick Cheney for 2018's "Vice," insisting on taking months to get the makeup just right. It's par the course for a method actor of Bale's caliber, but Cheney himself didn't seem to appreciate all of the hard work and effort the actor put into the role. 

To be fair, it doesn't sound like Cheney has actually seen "Vice" for what should be obvious reasons, as the film portrays him as a ruthless seeker of power throughout decades in Washington, D.C. But Bale revealed to Yahoo! Entertainment that the former vice president apparently didn't think much of his work in the film. He relayed the following anecdote: "Strangely enough, it was through my son's school, one of the moms was at a party that [Cheney] was at, and she said, 'Oh, I'm going to be seeing Christian tomorrow, you have anything to say to him? And he said, 'Tell him he's a d*ck.'"

Could this have been a way for the politician to slide a sneaky pun toward Bale's direction? He doesn't really seem to have much of a sense of humor, so we're inclined to believe his statement was genuine. 

"The Late Shift" is an HBO film from 1996 chronicling the late-night war between Jay Leno and David Letterman, with Leno taking Johnny Carson's place and Letterman attempting to get out of his contract to start a competing talk show. The film only came out a few years after the actual events took place, so maybe the whole thing was a bit raw for Letterman, who didn't mince words when talking about the actor who played him in the film — John Michael Higgins.

In a 1995 chat with Entertainment Weekly, Letterman stated, "The guy [John Michael Higgins] who's playing me — and I'm sure he's a fine actor — but his interpretation seems to be that I'm, well, a circus chimp. He looks like he's insane, like he's a budding psychopath. And afterward I thought, Well, maybe this is how I strike people as being." Perhaps this is why Higgins declined an invitation to appear on "Late Night with David Letterman" to promote the movie. There may have been concerns he wouldn't have received the warmest of welcomes from the late-night giant. 

Numerous films, from "Invictus" to "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom," have chronicled the life of Nelson Mandela, who helped improve the living conditions of Black communities in South Africa. One film, "Winnie Mandela," put his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, into the forefront, showing her childhood, her marriage to Mandela, and her aid in helping end apartheid. Unfortunately, the film didn't impress its subject matter, especially when the film's director, Darrell Roodt, referred to it as a "love story." 

Madikizela-Mandela told CNN (via The Guardian), "I was not consulted. I am still alive, and I think that it is a total disrespect to come to South Africa, make a movie about my struggle, and call that movie some translation of a romantic life of Winnie Mandela." This superficial retelling of her life also seems to have failed to impress critics, as the film currently stands at a 19% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 

The titular character in "Patch Adams" — a doctor who uses comedy to help patients — has become one of Robin Williams' signature roles. It may be overly schmaltzy for some, and that goes double for the film's subject, the real-life Dr. Hunter "Patch" Adams.

Dr. Adams suggests the film ultimately dumbed down his mission to bring greater empathy to healthcare. He told New Renaissance (via Far Out), "After the movie, there wasn't a single positive article about our work or me. There were dumb, stupid, meaningless things ... it made my children cry." Dr. Adams also took umbrage with the fact that the film ultimately didn't help his Gesundheit! Institute, a non-profit healthcare organization. He claimed that he barely received any money for the rights to his story, and he stated that if he had received the kind of money Williams did for his performance (a reported $21 million), he would've donated every cent to helping others. 

"Straight Outta Compton" is a stellar biopic, earning praise from filmmaker Ava DuVernay for its portrayal of the influential hip-hop group N.W.A. However, anyone unfamiliar with N.W.A. may have mistakenly thought there were primarily only three main figures — Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins), Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson Jr.), and Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell). DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.) and MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) also had important parts in the group's success in real life, but were largely relegated to the background of the hit movie. 

That didn't sit right with the real MC Ren, who took to the platform formerly known as Twitter to write, "True fans know my role in the group as far a lyrics are concerned, don't let the movie fool you about my contribution to the group." MC Ren's issues with the film began with the trailer itself for minimizing his presence, as he also tweeted, "Man f*** these b****es at universal pictures leaving me out the movie trailers tryin to rewrite history." 

Maybe his exclusion hurt even more, considering the real Dr. Dre and Ice Cube were producers on the film, meaning a conscious choice was made to emphasize their contributions, perhaps at the expense of what MC Ren did for them.

It's clearly not unheard of for biopic subjects to dislike their portrayals in various projects. However, Olivia de Havilland of "Gone With the Wind" fame took things a step further and could've changed how biopics as a whole operate after Catherine Zeta-Jones played her in FX's "Feud." She didn't appreciate how the show made her such a gossip and apparently changed things from how they really happened, such as her referring to Joan Fontaine as a "b****" rather than what she called her in real life — a "dragon lady." 

If the lawsuit had been successful, it could've opened the doors for other real-life figures to sue studios that portray them in an unflattering light, potentially even in instances where the portrayal is accurate to how it really happened. Instead, the court ruled in FX's favor, saying that real people don't have the final say in how they are portrayed in pieces of media. 

Val Kilmer's performance as Jim Morrison in "The Doors" is seen as one of his most pivotal roles that showed off his prowess as a performer. Director Oliver Stone praised his performance, even if he admitted it was natural for it to get snubbed by award bodies. However, one person who wasn't singing the film's praises at all was real-life Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek.

Following the film's release, Manzarek went on a tirade to The Los Angeles Times, criticizing how Kilmer played Morrison as a "violent, drunken fool." We'll never know what the real Jim Morrison thought of the performance, seeing as he died 20 years before the film came out. But Manzarek also took issue with how the film portrayed the band as a whole and the message they wanted to get across. "The film comes from the entirely wrong philosophical base," Manzarek explained. "The Doors were about idealism and the '60s quest for freedom and brotherhood. But the film isn't based on love. It's based [on] madness and chaos. Oliver has made Jim into an agent of destruction."

John Lydon, aka Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten, has made a career of rebelling against the system, so perhaps it comes as no surprise to see him bucking against the FX miniseries chronicling his band's ascent to fame. 2022's "Pistol," directed by Danny Boyle, earned Lydon's disdain right from the start for allegedly keeping him in the dark about what the show would precisely be about. 

He even filed a lawsuit against the show to try to prevent it from licensing the Sex Pistols' music, but he was unsuccessful in that endeavor. He also claimed the production made no attempt to reach out to him to get his side of the story; however, someone from "Pistol" has countered in saying that Boyle did, in fact, try to communicate with Lydon to no avail. Several years following "Pistol," Lydon had some choice words for his remaining bandmates upon news of a reunion tour (via The Independent). He took the opportunity to once again throw shade at Disney (FX's parent company) when asked if he would ever join them: "Never, not after what I consider their dirty deeds, let them wallow in Walt Disney woke expectations."

Gloria Steinem was a pivotal figure in the 1960s and 1970s feminist movement. To continue fighting for these rights, it's critical to understand the past, and Steinem believes the biopic series, 2020's "Mrs. America," which sees her portrayed by Rose Byrne, got one crucial detail wrong in that regard.

In particular, Steinem's condemnation of the show rests on how it portrays the Equal Rights Amendment failing to get added to the United States Constitution. According to Steinem, the miniseries overstates anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly's (Cate Blanchett) contributions and that it was actually the insurance industry and conservative special interest groups who ultimately killed the would-be amendment. As she told The Los Angeles Times, "I'm very disturbed that people may look at 'Mrs. America' and feel that women are our own worst enemies. Because even when we disagree, we don't have the power to be our own worst enemies."

The controversial Donald Trump biopic "The Apprentice" dodged lawsuits to eventually make its way into theaters and score star Sebastian Stan an Academy Award nomination. It's highly unlikely Trump himself had the time to actually watch "The Apprentice," seeing as it came out amid the 2024 presidential campaign, but he still took the time to bash the film on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The entire screed is too lengthy to post here, but here's the central thesis: "It's a cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job, put out right before the 2024 Presidential Election, to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country, 'MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!'" Prior to the film's release, director Ali Abbasi floated the idea of screening the film for President Trump to hear his thoughts and to engage in a dialogue about why the film portrayed what it did. It's highly unlikely the Trump campaign took him up on the offer.