What actor/actress has played the most real people?

[Kent_Clark]

Paul Muni played Napolean, Franz Schubert and black prizefighter Joe Gans in the same movie:eek: and also
Louis Pasteur
Emile Zola
Benito Juarez
Joseph Elsner
Pierre Espirit Radisson
(and himself in one movie)

His dream was to play Beethoven, but he couldn’t get Warner Brothers to make the movie.

[Baker]

@Little_Nemo

Anthony Hopkins has played Ernest Hemingway, Burt Munro, Ptolemy, Daniel Webster, Richard I, Charles Dickens, David Lloyd George, Siegfried Farnon, Bruno Hauptmann, Yitzhak Rabin, Col John Frost, Frederick Treves, Adolf Hitler, Paul of Tarsus, William Bligh, Galeazzo Ciano, Frank Doel, Donald Campbell, C. S. Lewis, Dr. John Kellogg, Richard Nixon, Pablo Picasso, John Quincy Adams, George Washington, John Winthrop, and William Radcliffe.

I think Hopkins wins.

But I came in to mention one of my favorite actors, Charlton Heston.

Marc Antony(three films)
Andrew Jackson(in two different films)
Lt. William Clark
Moses
Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar
Thomas Jefferson(TV movie)
John the Baptist
Michelangelo
Gen. Charles Gordon
Cardinal Richelieu
Henry VIII
Sir Thomas More(TV movie)
Cpt. Al Haynes(TV movie)
Brigham Young

Whoops, didn’t see the earlier post

@Sampiro

Charlton Heston portrayed Moses, Andrew Jackson (twice), Brigham Young, Michelangelo, John the Baptist, Sir Thomas More, Josef Mengele, Cardinal Richelieu, Robert Devereaux (Earl of Essex), Chinese Gordon, Thomas Jefferson, Henry VIII, Mark Antony (twice) and did voicework for Abraham Lincoln, Genghis Kahn, and other lesser known real people, and this isn’t including his stagework.

Michael Sheen is nowhere near the record holder (though he has played several actual people) but I’ll give him honorable mention for having portrayed Tony Blair in three completely unrelated vehicles. Peter O’Toole played Henry II in the movie adaptations of two unrelated plays (The Lion in Winter and Becket).

[RealityChuck]

George Arliss:
Cardinal Richelieu
Duke of Wellington
Mayer Rothschild
Nathan Rothschild (in the same movie)
Voltaire
Alexander Hamilton (non-rapping version)
Benjamin D’Israeli

On a percentage basis, he’s near the top: he only made 25 movies.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@Little_Nemo

Anthony Hopkins has played Ernest Hemingway, Burt Munro, Ptolemy, Daniel Webster, Richard I, Charles Dickens, David Lloyd George, Siegfried Farnon, Bruno Hauptmann, Yitzhak Rabin, Col John Frost, Frederick Treves, Adolf Hitler, Paul of Tarsus, William Bligh, Galeazzo Ciano, Frank Doel, Donald Campbell, C. S. Lewis, Dr. John Kellogg, Richard Nixon, Pablo Picasso, John Quincy Adams, George Washington, John Winthrop, and William Radcliffe.

Some of those were V.O. work, but it’s still an impressive list. Since your post, he’s also played Alfred Hitchcock and Freddy Heineken.

[p4poetic]

In addition to playing Sally Hemings, Carmen Ejogo has played Coretta Scott King twice (HBO film Boycott in 2001 and Selma in 2014) each at two different points of her life.

[Sunny_Daze]

Meryl Streep

Florence Foster Jenkins
Emmeline Pankhurst
Margaret Thatcher
Julia Child
Abigail Adams
Karen Milkweed

I forgot the Devil Wears Prada character was a case of “names changed to protect us from lawsuits” kind of thing. There may be others. That’s a long list of films.

[Tired_and_Cranky]

For women, I’d pick Helen Mirren. She has twelve now and one more in production. That includes both Shakespeare characters based on historical people and some made for TV biopics of people who aren’t exactly household names. I had to look some of them up to make sure they were real.

Alma Rattenbury (Cause célèbre)
Frances Penny Bethune (Bethune: The Making of a Hero)
Queen Charlotte (The Madness of King George)
Princess Evelyn Blucher (1914-1918)
Kathleen Quigley (Some Mother’s Son)
Ayn Rand (The Passion of Ayn Rand)
Queen Elizabeth I (Elizabeth I)
Queen Elizabeth II (The Queen)
Alma Reville (Hitchcock)
Linda Kenney Baden (Phil Spector)
Maria Altmann (Woman in Gold)
Hedda Hopper (Trumbo)
Sarah Winchester (Winchester–still in production)

[cochrane]

Never mind. I misread.

[commasense]

We can add at least one to Michael Sheen’s list: he plays William Masters in Masters of Sex.

I haven’t checked his IMDb listing to see if there are others since this zombie thread was opened in 2011.

[jtur88]

Probably some studio hack on the staff of the company that produced “You Are There” episodes, back i n the 1950s, re-enacting historical events.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

You know you can look this up in a second, right?

The actor with the most appearances is Paul Birch, being in only 14 episodes, two of them as Robert E. Lee.

[Aspidistra]

@Sunny_Daze

Meryl Streep

Florence Foster Jenkins
Emmeline Pankhurst
Margaret Thatcher
Julia Child
Abigail Adams
Karen Milkweed

I forgot the Devil Wears Prada character was a case of “names changed to protect us from lawsuits” kind of thing. There may be others. That’s a long list of films.

Lindy Chamberlain
Margaret Chase Smith
Mary Easty
Ethel Rosenberg

Is Karen Milkweed spell-correct-ese for Karen Silkwood?

[Bryan_Ekers]

The cast of History Bites, specifically Ron Pardo, Bob Bainborough, Janet van de Graaf and Teresa Pavlinek, any one of which played dozens of historical (and occasionally contemporary) persons, admittedly more often for laughs than any semblance of accuracy.

Pardo’s repertoire alone includes David Letterman, Ed Sullivan, Howard Stern, Dennis Miller, Don Cherry, Tom Brokaw, Ted Koppel, Ivan the Terrible, Larry King, Regis Philbin, Julius Caesar, Nero, Claudius, Justinian I, William Shakespeare, Henry Hudson, Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld, Jerry Springer, Woody Allen, Carroll O’Connor (as Archie Bunker), Neil Diamond, Gene Siskel, Bill Clinton and Sir Isaac Newton.