Not everyone can be as dope as Denzel Washington was in Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992); in fact, many people to this day still feel like Washington was cheated out of an Academy Award for his stirringly convincing portrayal. (Surprise, surprise.) Angela Bassett rose to new heights with her Oscar-nominated performance as Tina Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It (1993)--not to mention that Laurence Fishburne was so Ike Turner that you had to remind yourself not to hate him in anything else! Delivering an Oscar-winning performance in Ray (2004), Chris Rock recently drove home this point: "Jamie Foxx was so good in Ray that they went to the hospital and unplugged the real Ray Charles. It's like, 'We don't need two of these!'" In these instances, it is evident that casting the right people to play real-life legends can be done. However, not all biopics are created equal. Bringing the late, great Notorious B.I.G. to the big screen was met with mixed results in Notorious (2009) as it seemed to place film co-producer Sean "Puffy" Combs in more of a favorable light while pissing off Lil' Kim and many of her faithful fans for how she was portrayed. Also see one of the biggest casting failures of all time as Flex Alexander was selected to play Michael Jackson in Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story (2005)--a film produced for VH1 that did not even feature any of Jackson's songs, but merely mentioned them in passing.
