I ran across a neat website with photos of actors and the real persons they portrayed: Reel Faces.
Johnny Depp played George Jung/ in Blow and at the end of the movie there is a photo of the real George Jung and it is quite horrifying.
How about Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII?
Actually any modern actor is going to have much better teeth and skin than any historical figure prior to the twentieth century.
Joaquin Phoenix (pre-beard)/ Johnny Cash
Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen
This one is particularly daft since Jane Austen’s art was largely based on the difficult choices women in her society had to make when they couldn’t get by on their looks.
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Heck, probably even Michael J. Pollard
and just about anyone else who has played Billy the Kid.
William Bonney was not a real looker.
The young Henry VIII was actually famous for his good looks and athleticism. My problem with casting JRM is that Henry VIII was tall and imposing even before his massive weight gain. There’s no disguising the fact that RhysMyers is a puny sort.
Maria Doyle Kennedy, however, was much prettier than Catherine of Aragon. File:Catherine aragon.jpg - Wikipedia
Also, Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl, the wife of the slain WSJ reporter, Daniel Pearl. File:Marianne Pearl.jpg - Wikipedia
I mentioned this in another thread: Robert Redford was far too handsome to play John Dortmunder in The Hot Rock.
So far, IMHO, Garbo as Queen Christina wins the thread. And that’s without considering the fact that the painting was undoubtedly intended to flatter Queen Christina. I’ve seen better-looking basset hounds.
Johnny Depp plays John Dillinger in a movie that’s coming out soon.
Joseph Fiennes was a pretty idealized representation of William Shakespeare.
If that picture’s typical, Virginia Woolf was pretty hot.
Chris Cooper seems to be a much better looking guy than the real-life Robert Hanssen.
Rhys Meyers was puny once upon a time. (Largely because of a long undiagnosed stomach ulcer for which he had to have surgery several years ago.) Now, not so much.
But there’s no question that Joss Stone is no Anne of Cleves who was known as Henry’s plainest/homeliest wife (said to have a horse face, IIRC).
But for that matter, Anne Boleyn and her alleged polydactyly wouldn’t have held a candle to either Natalie Dormer nor Natalie Portman.
And though the movie itself (let alone the casting) is still a rumor, I think it’s being extremely generous to Vivienne Westwood (on the left) to suggest that she should be played by Kate Winslet who is a complete glamour puss walking down the street in the cold.
It was said many times, but T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia” was not at all good looking:
Peter O’Toole and Alec Guinness (who played him on stage) were infinitely more photogenic
Liam Neeson looks quite a bit better than Oskar Schindler.
From Eight Men Out:
John Cusack played George ‘Buck’ Weaver
Charlie Sheen played Oscar ‘Happy’ Felsch
David Strathairn played Eddie Cicotte
D.B. Sweeney played Joseph ‘Shoeless Joe’ Jackson
Michael Rooker played Arnold ‘Chick’ Gandil
Don Harvey played Charles ‘Swede’ Risberg
James Read played Claude ‘Lefty’ Williams
The Black Sox really were an extraordinarily ugly bunch of guys, weren’t they? You could have picked almost anyone to play them and they would have had to be better looking.
Eh…I always thought that Dillinger was a pretty decent looking guy by 1930’s gangster standards.
The problem isn’t that Johnny Depp is so much better looking than him (which he probably is), but that he doesn’t really look anything like Dillinger
Christian Bale is playing Melvin Purvis in the same movie. Now thats a real stretch.
Really? He looks quite handsome in these pictures. He’s at least the equal of Peter O’Toole.
And I also have to disagree on Jesse James. He looks nothing like Brad Pitt, but he is very handsome, especially considering that photography in those days made pretty much everyone look like a goofball.
On the far end of the curve, Paul Giamatti is still a lot better looking than Harvey Pekar
