# The Actor is WAY better looking than the real life person being portrayed in the film **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 6, 2009, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-actor-is-way-better-looking-than-the-real-life-person-being-portrayed-in-the-film/488508 "2009-03-06T10:33:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2009, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-actor-is-way-better-looking-than-the-real-life-person-being-portrayed-in-the-film/488508/81 "2009-03-09T21:17:04Z")
[Judith Light](http://images.google.com/images?q=judith%20light&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi) played[Jeanne White Giner](http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&q=jeanne%20white%20ginder&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi), the mother of Ryan White. There’s no resemblance between the two at all. (The two women became very good friends and Light has done a lot of work raising money for White’s organizations since the biopic.) There’s a Lincoln movie in development with Spielberg starring Liam Neeson, a very good looking and somewhat beefy (at least as opposed to skinny) actor, unlike the famously homely and skinny Lincoln. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2009, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-actor-is-way-better-looking-than-the-real-life-person-being-portrayed-in-the-film/488508/82 "2009-03-09T21:19:11Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > In “Bully” (one of my favorite movies) based on a true-crime case, the girls involved in the murder of a bully are all really sexy - in real life (you can see the photos of the real people, online) they were quite homely. Also, the movie had Nick Stahl play the role of the bully - in real life he was like 250 pounds of muscle, and Iranian. I remember looking up that case after the movie. It was a **LOT** easier to understand why he was, well, a bully after seeing the real guy. IRL no matter how mean or “scrappy” Nick Stahl wanted to be, Brad Renfro could totally take him so it just made his character look like a wuss to be his butt boy. A guy who could pulverize you though makes more sense. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2009, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-actor-is-way-better-looking-than-the-real-life-person-being-portrayed-in-the-film/488508/83 "2009-03-09T21:39:06Z")
Paul Newman was a stretch for Earl Long in **Blaze**. Lolita Davidovich as Blaze Starr was about right, though. ---
**Author:** ![Nicolas\_Bourbaki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@Nicolas\_Bourbaki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nicolas_Bourbaki)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2009, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-actor-is-way-better-looking-than-the-real-life-person-being-portrayed-in-the-film/488508/84 "2009-03-10T00:30:59Z")
Geez, some people here have really high standards for what counts as decent-looking. Ted Bundy, Anne Frank, and Virginia Woolf are ugly? Anyways, so it won’t be a threadshit, I’ll find something that actually applies to the OP: there was this one movie about the Guildford Four whose name I can’t remember; [Daniel Day-Lewis](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kKJTit2GpRQ/Rz6_nPQpWSI/AAAAAAAAADk/fPSXE1wRLZI/S692/DanielDayLewis.jpg) plays [this](http://www.injusticebusters.com/index.htg/00004/conlon.jpg) [guy](http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2005/02/10/guildford_wideweb__430x282.jpg). ---
**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2009, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-actor-is-way-better-looking-than-the-real-life-person-being-portrayed-in-the-film/488508/85 "2009-03-10T01:27:39Z")
> [@Tom\_Scud](#): > > Not so much a good-looking vs. bad-looking issue, but one of badly-different body types: Leonardo DiCaprio is apparently set to play Theodore Roosevelt: > > [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480046/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480046/) Do you mean you think DiCaprio is too beefy? He has beefed up for roles such as Blood Diamond, but in Revolutionary Road he had gone pretty much back to normal. You do know that the movie is about Teddy’s early years, right? A good wardrobe, proper haircut, good makeup, slap some sideburns on him, and he’ll do fine. [Teddy as a young man.](http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/graph%20harv%20col/HC4.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2009, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-actor-is-way-better-looking-than-the-real-life-person-being-portrayed-in-the-film/488508/86 "2009-03-10T05:45:57Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > > [@Sigmagirl](#): > > > > [Salma Hayek.](http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/famecrawler/2008/08/08-15/salma-hayek-picture-2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/famecrawler/archive/2008/08/14/salma-hayek-is-a-passionate-mama.aspx&usg=__2cwvQkDlAPIIDtn0IVyNd4iTBDs=&h=490&w=376&sz=53&hl=en&start=18&um=1&tbnid=sL0JG_4swCCGqM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=100&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsalma%2Bhayek%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1) > > [Frida Kahlo.](http://onechick.com/smog/images/frida_kahlo.jpg) > > > > Kahlo wasn’t hideous. But Hayyyyyyek. > > Wasn’t hideous? > > She had a _mustache._ Literally. True, but wax that moustache and pluck that unibrow, and she’s actually pretty cute. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2009, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-actor-is-way-better-looking-than-the-real-life-person-being-portrayed-in-the-film/488508/87 "2009-03-10T08:51:43Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I remember looking up that case after the movie. It was a **LOT** easier to understand why he was, well, a bully after seeing the real guy. IRL no matter how mean or “scrappy” Nick Stahl wanted to be, Brad Renfro could totally take him so it just made his character look like a wuss to be his butt boy. A guy who could pulverize you though makes more sense. In the actual case, though, Marty Puccio (Renfro’s character) was also very strong, built, and on steroids. He could have fought off Bobby if he really wanted to. The reason why he didn’t, is that he was completely dependent on Bobby. Bobby was literally Marty’s only friend, and vice versa, and the two of them were totally dependent on each other. Even though Bobby beat up Marty all the time, he continued to consider him his best friend, even insisting that his father hire Marty at the car-stereo business they had planned to open. Marty continued to take Bobby’s abuse because he genuinely loved Bobby. He also hated him. The situation with Marty Puccio was analogous to a woman who is beaten by her husband for 10 years but remains with him. Marty eventually “snapped” but I think the murder of Bobby Kent was really the idea of Marty’s girlfriend Lisa Connolly, who did a bullshit sentence while Marty is still in prison for life. I do not think this is right. Marty Puccio deserves another shot at life. His killing of his “best friend”, while obviously not the ideal way to deal with the situation, was the result of years of constant physical abuse and psychological torment, and this needs to be taken into consideration. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2009, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-actor-is-way-better-looking-than-the-real-life-person-being-portrayed-in-the-film/488508/88 "2009-03-10T11:04:27Z")
Strange thing: in her worst photograph, Frida Kahlo is far better-looking than in her best self-portrait. That woman had some serious self-esteem issues. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-actor-is-way-better-looking-than-the-real-life-person-being-portrayed-in-the-film/488508.md?page=4)