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20 Movie Actors and Their Less Attractive Real Life Characters
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20 Movie Actors and Their Less Attractive Real Life Characters

5 years ago 34 Comments

Hollywood is a funny place.   It’s a place that tells true stories and makes then dramatic.   It’s a place that sets up these stories and manipulates them in such a way that audiences will go “ooh and ahhh” and talk about the stories when they go home.

While the stories remain almost all true you kind of have to understand that Hollywood is Hollywood and to make things interesting little tweaks have to be made.

One area that we’re focusing on today is the actual characters.  Nine times out of ten in movies based on true stories, the actors playing the lead characters are always better looking then the “real life” characters.

Here are 20 such examples….

Thanks to Buzzfeed for the photos

Ray Liotta as Henry Hill in Goodfellas

Josh Brolin as George Bush Jr. in W

Mark Harmon as Ted Bundy in The Deliberate Stranger

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in Cleopatra

Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line

Johnny Depp as John Dillinger in Public Enemies

Leonardo DiCaprio and Frank Abagnale in Catch me if you Can

Jim Caviezel as Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ

Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo in Frida

Daniel Day Lewis as Gerry Conlon in In the Name of the Father

Julie Andrews as Marie Von Trapp in The Sound Of Music

Angelina Jolie as Christine Collins in Changeling

Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos in Monster

Brad Pitt as Jesse James in The Assassination of Jesse James

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as Bonnie and Clyde in Bonnie and Clyde

The Rock as Sean Porter in Gridiron Gang

Johnny Depp as George Jung in Blow

Antonio Banderas as Pancho Villa in And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself

Russell Crow as John Nash in A Beautiful Mind

Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas in American Gangster



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Nat B
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I'm into 80s movies like Rocky IV, video games like Double Dribble, and completely ignoring everything past the year 2000.

  • Felixed

    “Nine times out of ten in movies based on true stories, the actors playing the lead characters are always better looking then the “real life” characters.”

    What about the one in ten? Can you make a list where the real life person was better looking than the actor playing them? That’d be pretty cool also.

  • Keith

    …Jesus?

  • …cleopatra?

  • how do we know she looked like that old hag on that coin? 😀

  • Bloop2112

    Yeah I’ve watched MONSTER and she didn’t look like that in the film … you cheats!

  • nekroholic

    They could not find a pic of Charlize Theron from Monster. Because everyone else had one.

  • desario

    Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker?

  • Guy Incognitus

    Johnny Depp as Donnie Brasco?

    Pic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brascoo.gif

  • MetFanMac

    Please, unless the role was specifically written for an ugly character there’s no way any of the Hollywood Pretty People would ever so debase themselves as to look anything but stunning.

  • Merv

    Brad Pitt as Billy Beane in the upcoming Moneyball

  • Rairai

    “Leonardo DiCaprio and Frank Abagnale in Catch me if you Can”

    Typo.

    “It’s a place that tells true stories and makes then dramatic.”

    Typo.

    “Nine times out of ten in movies based on true stories, the actors playing the lead characters are always better looking then the ‘real life’ characters.”

    Typo.

    I feel like I just read a six year old’s essay on why Hollywood movie stars are so pretty and regular people are ugly. You people should give me a job.

  • Seba

    Yeah, thats the “real” blond Jesus

  • VonMelee

    That’s the two Dell characters you went with? Where’s Hunter S Thompson?

  • VonMelee

    Depp characters. DEPP. Stupid autocorrect.

  • Luke

    Josh Brolin is butt ugly while Bush at least looks like a pleasant guy to talk to. And Jim Caviazel is a cool guy, but no-one knows what Jesus looked like. He probably looked more like LOST’s Sayid Jarrah than the blue-eyed, light-brown-haired guy people picture.

  • Nauks

    Jim Caviezel is indeed better looking than someone’s specualtion of what Jesus might have looked like >:)

    Also thumbs up for BLONDE Jesus, would have been funny if it was trolling, doubt it is though.

  • Goodman Fetterbump

    Not the best choices as many of these were very good looking people already. If not as good looking as the actors at least in the right ballpark.
    And at least in the case of charlise theron you used a picture from her normal beautiful self, not from the movie. Where using make up and false teeth to look very much like the woman she played.

  • phillygirl

    I think johnny cash was handsome. And it was said that Cleopatra made the face on the coin look like that on purpose so she may have not looked like that really. Honestly now thinking on it, it doesn’t matter

  • Xploas

    I can’t actually tell whether Crowe is better looking than Nash. And the Bible does imply that Jesus wasn’t that great looking of a dude, though he was probably a little more Middle Eastern looking than that picture.

  • Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf (not really ALL THAT BAD LOOKING) “The Hours”?

  • ryan bonline

    that looks like a much older cash than was portrayed in the movie.

  • Ben

    Ted Bundy had one of those faces that could look different just by changing a few features, like his hair. He had a huge advantage in that he was articulate and attractive, which made him a dangerous serial killer. The real Bundy was more attractive than the actor (depends on the picture), so there’s the one in ten.

    Theron did not look like that in her portrayal of Aileen Wuornos in Monster.

    This article overall was a POS.

  • Bob

    The Charlize Theron one doesn’t count. They made her ugly as crap for that movie.

  • eric

    Cleopatra?
    Jesus?

    Come on, guys. That is scraping the barrel.

    You also know bloody well that Charlize put on weight and got uglied up for her performance, so that doesn’t count either as she actually sacrificed her looks for an acting role.

    Quite a few of the others are subject to debate as well.

    Poor article. Very poor.

  • fart noise

    Robert Redford as Bob Woodward “All the President’s Men.”

  • RaZZo

    Uhhhh…you realize that’s a PAINTING of Jesus, right?

  • Mari

    I don’t think it’s fair to put Charlize Theron up there when the make up job they did made her look a lot like Wuornos.

  • Patty O’Heater

    Julie Andrews looks better? I think not!

  • 2

    Um, Jesus obviously would have been brown.. Middle-Eastern?

  • 2 more tougher ones

    Jennifer Lopez as Selena and Angelina Jolie as Gia; you gotta b beautiful to outshine a pop star and a model (respectively)

  • hanser36

    The johnny cash photo is taken of him much later in life, his resemblance was much more similar as a young man….manipulation for the sake of the article

  • Excellent post, but the actors were chosen because their utterly resemblance, with a few exceptions, of course, Di Caprio – Abagnale being one of them, 🙂

  • Lee Christopher

    George Bush? You’re kidding, right? Jesus Christ, less attractive real life character? No credibility at all! What a joke!

  • Of course, Johnny cash was handsome. And it was said that Cleopatra made the face on the coin look like that on purpose so she may have not looked like that really. Honestly now thinking on it, it doesn’t matter