Biopics now account for a sizable portion of both mainstream and indie filmmaking, and they are sometimes predicted to win big during awards season. Examples include Eddie Redmayne's Oscar-winning portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything and Austin Butler in Baz Luhrmann's Elvis. Biopics can rekindle a person's love in society or make them aware of an ordinary person with extraordinary achievements. It's also been discovered that women, LGBT+ people, and people of color are far less likely to have a film made on their lives than the average guy.
So, Hollywood, if you're listening, these are some of the best biopic casting choices you should make:
#1 Dream biopic casting: Michaela Coel as Nina Simone
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Nina Simone was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist. Her music included classical, folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and pop influences.
#2 Dream biopic casting: Brad Pitt as Robert Redford
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Robert Redford is an actor, director, and producer from the United States. Redford has been heavily interested with indie filmmaking.
#3 Dream biopic casting: Queen Latifah as Zora Neale Hurston
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Zora Neale Hurston was a writer, anthropologist, and filmmaker from the United States. She depicted racial tensions in the early 1900s American South and published hoodoo studies. Their Eyes Were Watching God, the most popular of her four novels, was published in 1937.
#4 And the final dream biopic casting: Megan Fox as Elizabeth Taylor
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Elizabeth Taylor was an American and British actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and rose to become one of classical Hollywood's most popular actresses in the 1950s.
#5 Dream biopic casting: Tommy Lee Jones as Andrew Johnson
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From 1865 until 1869, Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States. He was the vice president at the time of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, therefore he seized the presidency.
#6 Dream biopic casting: Gina Gershon as Raquel Welch
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Raquel Welch is a well-known American actress. Welch created a unique film persona that made her an icon of the 1960s and 1970s through her portrayal of strong female characters, which helped her break the mold of the traditional sex symbol.
#7 Dream biopic casting: Jay Pharoah as Eddie Murphy
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Edward Regan Murphy is an actor, comedian, writer, producer, and singer from the United States. He rose to prominence as a regular cast member on the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live from 1980 through 1984.
#8 Dream biopic casting: Diana Silvers as Julia Roberts
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Julia Fiona Roberts is an actress from the United States. She is noted for her main parts in films ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to thrillers and action blockbusters. She is one of Hollywood's most bankable stars.
#9 Dream biopic casting: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Teddy Pendergrass
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Pendergrass, Theodore DeReese, was an American singer. Pendergrass was born at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and spent much of his life there until rising to musical acclaim as the lead singer of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes.
#10 Dream biopic casting: Zoe Saldana as Jada Pinkett Smith
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Jada Pinkett Smith is a talk show host and actress from the United States. She is the co-host of the Facebook Watch chat show Red Table Talk, for which she won a Daytime Emmy. In 2021, Time named her one of the 100 most important persons in the world.
#11 Dream biopic casting: Debra Messing as Lucille Ball
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Lucille Désirée Ball was an actress, comedian, and producer from the United States. She was nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning five of them, and she also received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
#12 Dream biopic casting: Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Heath Ledger
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Heath Andrew Ledger was a music video director and actor from Australia. Ledger died on January 22, 2008, as a consequence of an accidental pharmaceutical overdose. Ledger had finished filming his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight a few months before his death.
#13 Dream biopic casting: John Boyega as Denzel Washington
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Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is an actor, director, and producer from the United States. He has been regarded as an actor who "reconfigured the concept of classic movie stardom" for his performances on the film and stage.
#14 Dream biopic casting: Dakota Johnson as Grace Slick
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Grace Slick is a former singer-songwriter and painter from the United States. In the mid-1960s, Slick was a significant character in San Francisco's early psychedelic music scene.
#15 Dream biopic casting: Halle Bailey as Janet Jackson
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Damita, Janet Jo Jackson is a singer, songwriter, actress, and dancer from the United States. She is known for her avant-garde, socially concerned, and sexually explicit music, as well as her extravagant stage productions.
#16 Dream biopic casting: Will Ferrell as Chad Smith (the drummer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers)
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John William Ferrell is an actor, comedian, producer, and writer from the United States. He rose to prominence as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live in the mid-1990s.
#17 Dream biopic casting: Taraji P. Henson as Tammi Terrell
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Tammi Terrell was an American singer-songwriter best known as a Motown Records star singer in the 1960s, most notably for a series of duets with singer Marvin Gaye.
#18 Dream biopic casting: George Clooney as Cary Grant
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Cary Grant was a British-born American actor. From the 1930s to the mid-1960s, he was one of classic Hollywood's quintessential leading men, known for his transatlantic accent, debonair manner, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing.
#19 Dream biopic casting: Keke Palmer as Angela Bassett
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Angela Bassett is an actress, director, and producer from the United States. She has received various honours. Bassett had her breakthrough as singer Tina Turner in the biopic What's Love Got to Do with It (1993), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
#20 Dream biopic casting: Jennifer Lawrence as Helen Mirren
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Dame Helen Lydia Mirren DBE is a well-known English actress. She is the first performer in history to have won the Triple Crown of Acting in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
#21 Dream biopic casting: Kelly Rowland as Donna Summer
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LaDonna Adrian Gaines, better known as Donna Summer, was a singer, songwriter, and actor from the United States. During the disco era of the 1970s, she rose to prominence and became known as the "Queen of Disco," with her music gaining a global following.