Neigh, neigh we have done this a million times, Candace Bushnell aka Carrie Bradshaw is much, much more attractive than Sarah Jessica Parker.
I remember Mary Harmon, widow of college football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, complaining that Gary Busey was ugly compared to her handsome husband. The film was 1984’s “The Bear” and apparently it’s a good thing it’s not on TV.
IIRC one of the reasons she authorized it was the idea it would provide jobs to the people of Alabama…and it was filmed in Georgia, Texas, and California
In the movie “The Blind Side” about the Tuohy family adopting a dirt poor Michael Oher who has gone on the play in the NFL, the real life Tuohy women may be more attractive than the actresses that played them in the movie.
Lily Collins and Sandra Bullock played Collins and Leigh Ann, respectively.
Granted that the actress playing the daughter was younger in the movie than the picture of the real life daughter. Also, there wasn’t a whole lot of glamming up the women in the movie either. Still, the Tuohy women are very attractive, in my opinion.
Not really any better. 
Valerie Plame’s definitely a sexy babe who’s welcome to spy on me any time, but… hotter than Naomi Watts??? No way, man!
On the other hand, Eva Peron’s definitely more beautiful than Madonna. And while I agree that Erin Brockovich is better-looking than Julia Roberts, that’s sort of damning with faint praise. 
That’s gonna be a tough condition to meet, since Hollywood’s notorious for casting actors/actresses who are WAY too good-looking for the role… best example I can think of would be Charlize Theron in Monster, who through a miracle of makeup managed to appear even more hideous & scary than the real Aileen Wuornos.
And speaking of serial killers – while I’ve never seen the film he was in, Michael Reilly Burke doesn’t seem handsome enough to play Ted Bundy. (Mark Harmon’s a tossup.)
My best example is Pancho Barnes (seen here with Amelia Earhart). She was an aviation pioneer, gunrunner, and owner of a bar and dude ranch that became a hangout for test pilots from Edwards Air Force Base. She was, by all accounts, ugly as a mud fence and swore like a sailor. In the TV movie about her life, she was played by Valerie Beritinelli.
Actually I think he looks quite a lot like him.
Actually, both of those pictures are Ms. Theron. This is the real Aileen Wuornos. They did do a great job on her makeup, but I’d say it was primarily her acting that made her scary.
Yes, listing actors who are much better looking than their real life counterparts is pointless, since 99% of the time the actors are much better looking than the character they’re based on. (Most egregious? ClaireDanes vs Temple Grandin.)
Show me a movie where someone who looks like Temple Grandin plays Claire Danes, and we can talk.
To be clear, Ava Gardner was a legendary beauty and her personality apparently took that to 11. But any attempt to portray Kate Beckinsale as anything other than profoundly beautiful leaves me 
.
Everyman Jimmy Stewart was a lot older, and not as dashing, as the young Lindbergh that he played in Spirit of St. Louis.
I could never understand why Hollywood thinks Julia Roberts is such a beauty; as personally I would rate her as “attractive” and barely average-looking.
Yes, the late Dorothy Stratten was a great beauty. In addition, I had read some articles/interviews about her, and she also seemed like a very sincere, intelligent person.
The real Burt Munro was a tall, lean, playful, charismatic dude even at the age when he set the world’s speed record on his Indian; he was portrayed by the pudgy, uncharismatic, though excellent actor Anthony Hopkins in The World’s Fastest Indian.
I haven’t seen pictures to verify, but John Wojtowicz claims his real (born female) wife was slim and attractive as opposed to Susan Peretz, who played her counterpart in Dog Day Afternoon.
I’m not sure if any of the adaptations of Pride and Prejudice have had a Jane who was clearly more attractive than Elizabeth, although it’s of some significance to the plot of the novel that Jane is an obvious beauty while Elizabeth is initially considered “tolerable, but not handsome enough” for Mr. Darcy to even dance with.
Similarly, in the novel Emma everyone seems to agree that Harriet Smith is a very pretty girl, and Emma thinks that Harriet is pretty enough that she might expect to marry up. Emma is described as being good-looking as well, but Harriet is prettier or at least more conventionally attractive. Austen doesn’t usually spend a lot of time on physical descriptions, but she emphasizes that Harriet is a curvy, blue-eyed blonde while Emma is a slim, hazel-eyed brunette. But adaptations of Emma tend to make the title character prettier/more conventionally attractive (and often blonder) than Harriet.
He’s probably right.
I remember Eve once posting that she thought Beulah Annan, the real-life inspiration for the Roxie Hart character in Chicago, was better looking than most of the actresses who’ve played the role on stage or screen. I had a hard time finding photos that were really of Annan, but the book The Girls of Murder City had this one: The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired ... - Douglas Perry - Google Books
I think Emily Blunt was no where as pretty as the real Queen Victoria of that time period.