These based on a true story movies are pretty accurate — aside from their fictionalized main characters.
Does knowing that lead characters — and in some cases, the hero of the movie — were Hollywood inventions take away from your enjoyment of the films? Or do you go into movies looking to be entertained, and do your own reading afterwards to get the true story?
Either way, here are 12 based on a true story movies with made-up lead characters.
Amelia Wren in The Aeronauts (2019)
James Glaisher, one of the heroes of the based on a true story hot-air balloon drama The Aeronauts, really did exist. But Amelia Wren, the daring heroine of the journey played by Felicity Jones (left), was a fictionalized character.
As The Aeronauts director Tom Harper has explained, Wren was a composite based on two people: One was Henry Tracey Coxwell, who joined Glaisher on the record-breaking 1862 expedition fictionalized in the film. The other was Sophie Blanchard, the first woman to become a professional balloonist, who was also “Napoleon’s head of aeronautics,” according to Harper.
Despite some liberties with the facts — and the invention of a lovable heroine — Harper told a SCAD Savannah Film Festival audience in 2019 that 90 percent of the events depicted in The Aeronauts really did happen.
Tommy Saunders in Patriots Day (2016)
Tommy Saunders, the hero of the based on a true story Boston Marathon bombing drama Patriots Day, doesn’t really exist. As played by Mark Wahlberg, he is present for all of the key events of April 15, 2013, from the finish-line bombing to the capture of one of the bombers, leading some critics to complain that Wahlberg sought a self-aggrandizing role in the film about his hometown tragedy.
But no, director Peter Berg told The Washington Post: In truth, the filmmakers wanted Saunders to represent the heroism of many police officers. He’s a composite — a combination of several real people — like many of the fictional heroes on this list.
“It was better to [have a fictitious character] than to pretend there was this big cop who did all sorts of things he didn’t really do, which would have really angered the entire Boston Police Department,” Berg said. “So when we said we were going to composite up that character, everybody was really OK with it. It made it more real, I think, because there really was no supercop — it was a team effort.”
Carl Hanratty in Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Whether or not you believe all the details of his absolutely wild crimes detailed in the based on a true story Catch Me If You Can, Frank Abagnale Jr., the dashing con man played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a real person.
But the man who brought him to justice in the film is not. In fact, Carl Hanratty, the sharp FBI agent played by Tom Hanks (above), is based on several agents, especially Joe Shea, who shied away from publicity during his life. He died in 2005.
“He worked on a number of interesting cases including the Barbara Jane Mackle kidnapping and the Frank Abagnale case,” noted Shea’s obituary.
Commander Bolton in Dunkirk (2016)
Dunkirk is one of our favorite movies based on a true story, and one of the most inspiring. It mentions several real-life military officers, but the leader who is most often seen on screen — Kenneth Branaugh’s Commander Bolton (above), is a composite character.
Dunkirk writer-director Christopher Nolan explained that he used composite characters because he wanted to tell the story of a crucial moment in World War II, not to focus on individual stories.
“We have fictional characters with fictional names; we’re not trying to tell anyone’s story here,” he told USA Today. “But the bigger movements portrayed are accurate.” He also added that he hoped his film “will inspire people who are interested to look into the stories of the real people who were actually there.”
All that said, Dunkirk is pretty accurate — it’s on our list of based on a true story movies that are actually pretty true.
Rayon in Dallas Buyers’ Club (2013)
Jared Leto won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Rayon, a transgender woman who is a crucial part of the story of Ronald Woodruff, a real person (played by Matthew McConaughey in the film) who started a “buyers club” in the 1980s that distributed AIDS treatments to people in need.
But there was no actual Rayon. screenwriters Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack interviewed “transgender AIDS patients, activists and doctors for the film,” according to TIME, and used those interviews to create the composite characters of Rayon and Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner).
Today’s Hollywood would be unlikely to cast a non-transgender actor in a transgender role, but at the time of the film’s release, the film and Leto were widely praised for their sensitivity.
Sari in Cocaine Bear (2023)
Amazingly, Cocaine Bear is very loosely based on a true story of a a 175-pound black bear who happened upon a lot of cocaine in Georgia in December 1985.
And yes, the cocaine really did end up in the woods thanks to Andrew Carter Thornton II, a former paratrooper, a police officer, and lawyer who jumped our of a Cessna 404 with about 77 pounds of cocaine strapped to his body.
In Cocaine Bear, Matthew Rhys briefly plays Thornton, and his wife and Americans co-star, Keri Russell, plays the heroic Sari (above), a nurse who tries to save her daughter Dee Dee from the drug-addled bear.
But Sari, as you may have guessed, is not a real person. Pretty much everything in the movie is made up after the high-flying intro.
Kayla in Bombshell (2019)
Bombshell tells the story of three women — Megyn Kelly, Gretchen Carlson and Kayla Pospisil — who help expose sexual harassment at Fox News. As you may recall, Fox News boss Roger Ailes really did resign amidst sexual harassment claims, and Fox News did pay $50 million to settle harassment and discrimination claims.
You’re probably familiar with Kelly (played by Charlize Theron in the film) and Carlson (played by Nicole Kidman) but you may not remember Kayla Pospisil, the young Fox staffer played by Margot Robbie. That’s because Kayla is a composite, fictionalized character.
“Kayla is an amalgamation of many women’s stories, and some of the specifics you see in scenes with her are taken from real-life interactions those women experienced,” Robbie told EW in 2019.
Ben Campbell in 21 (2005)
21 is based on a true story of six MIT students who become experts at card counting in Blackjack and take millions from Las Vegas casinos. The film’s hero is Ben Campbell, played by British actor Tom Sturgess.
Ben is not a real person, but is loosely based on the real life Jeff Ma. At the time of the film’s release, there were objections to Sturgess’ casting because Ma is Asian-American and Campbell and Sturgess are not.
The real Ma, who didn’t make the casting decision, told MIT’s student newspaper in 2008: “I think that part of it is being overblown a little bit, just because the reality is that if you had a movie made about you, what would be the most important thing? It wouldn’t necessarily be that it was incredibly accurate to life; It would be that it be a good movie. I wanted a great actor to portray me, and Jim is an unbelievable actor.”
American Hustle (2013)
Directed by David O. Russell, American Hustle is based on the true story of the Abscam scandal of the late 1970s and early 1980s, a federal corruption investigation that snared six members of the U.S. House of Representatives, a U.S. senator, a New Jersey state legislator, three Philadelphia councilmen, and several political operatives. It involved invested Arab sheiks trying to get Atlantic City casino licenses, and eager to hand out suitcases full of money, among other lures.
American Hustle says in its credits that it is a work of fiction, but it gets the gist of the sting operation right. What’s made up are the lead characters, though all are based on real people. Christian Bale plays con man Irving Rosenfeld, Amy Adams plays his partner in crime and mistress, Sydney Prosser, Jennifer Lawrence plays his wife, Rosalyn Rosenfield, Bradley Cooper plays FBI agent Richie DiMaso, and Jeremy Renner plays mayor Carmine Polito.
Several characters are aged down from the people they are based on — because it’s Hollywood — and the film makes several changes for dramatic purposes. For example, while the real woman who inspired Sydney was born in the U.K., in the film she’s an ex-dancer from New Mexico.
And according to Bradley Cooper, his character was based on multiple people: “He was like a hybrid of three guys,” Cooper told a Santa Barbara International Film Festival audience earlier this year. “I remember one of the guys who thought it was based on him was not very happy.”
Maya in Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Maya, the daring CIA agent played by Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty (above) who is crucial to locating Osama bin Laden, is a composite character based on a real terror expert.
The expert was once dubbed “The Unidentified Queen of Torture” in a New Yorker investigation by Jane Mayer, and the CIA has never released her name.
Maya is portrayed in the film as a tough, brave agent who overcomes bureaucracy and ineptitude in a male-dominated agency to do what needs to be done. But some critics argued when Zero Dark Thirty was released that it incorrectly indicated that the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” helped the agency locate bin Laden to Navy SEALS could kill him.
Interestingly, the woman who inspired the hero of Zero Dark Thirty also appears to have inspired a character in The Report, which takes a much for critical view of CIA interrogations post 9/11.
Edie Flowers in Painkiller (2023)
Which brings us to another recent Netflix project about the opioid crisis.
Painkiller stars Uzo Aduba as Edie Flowers, an attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Roanoke, Virginia who goes on a campaign to stop the Sackler family’s pain empire — in part because addiction has hit her own family.
She’s one of those heroes who seems to good to be true, because she is. Edie Flowers is not a real person.
“She’s a composite character of a number of investigators, journalists, and some government investigators who, collectively… blew the whistle on this,” Painkiller executive producer Eric Newman told MovieMaker.
Liza Drake in Pain Hustlers (2023)
This Netflix pharmaceutical drama stars Emily Blunt as the likable Liza Drake, a down-on-her-luck single mom who gets involved in pharmaceutical sales after meeting Pete Brenner (Chris Evans) at the adult entertainment establishment where she works.
It’s based on the nonfiction Evan Hughes book Pain Hustlers: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup, and as many have noted, the fictional Florida company in the film, Zanna, has many parallels with Insys Therapeutics, the real company examined in the book.
But Liza Drake is not a real person. The ex-dancer turned super saleswoman is an appealing audience surrogate who invites us into the world of opioid sales. There are no pure heroes in Pain Hustlers, but Liza is as close as we get.
That said, we aren’t counting this one on our list, because Painkiller is a limited series, not a movie.
Enjoyed This List of Movies Based on a True Story With Pretend Lead Characters?
You might also like this list of Uplifting Movies That Aren’t Annoying and Fake, full of many real and pretend heroes.
And please let us know in the comments if you think we’ve missed a pretend lead characters in a based on a true story movie.
Main image: The Aeronauts. Amazon Prime Video