The 15 worst biopics of all time

is a 2017 biopic about rapper Tupac Shakur and the film is named after his 1996 album. The movie, directed by Benny Boom, stars Demetrius Shipp Jr., who bears a resemblance to Shakur, but that resemblance is only skin deep. The movie has been praised for accurately re-creating the clothing Shakur wore, but Shipp Jr. lacks the charisma that made Tupac a rap legend. All Eyez On Me got dissed by critics and quickly disappeared from theaters and our collective memories, unlike the music of the real-life Shakur.

Goodness, gracious … Dennis Quaid plays rockabilly pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis in the 1989 biopic , which divided critics. Some praised Quaid’s “crackerjack” performance, while many noticed that the movie shied away from the darker elements of Lewis’ life to create a cleaned-up, more palatable rock-and-roll biography, even though the movie poster boasted that Lewis was “born to raise hell.” Lewis reportedly said that he hated the film and the book upon which it is based, but did say that Quaid “really pulled it off” and complimented the actor on learning how to play Lewis-style piano for the movie.

The 1989 biopic starred Michael Chiklis as actor-comedian John Belushi, one of the original Saturday Night Live cast members. The critical response to Wired wasn’t just negative, it was downright hostile, calling it an “unintentional parody” of Belushi’s troubled life. Leonard Maltin said that Wired was “the film fiasco of its year” and “mind-numbingly wrongheaded.” Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club said, “To call Wired an unconscionable act of grave robbery/defilement would be an insult to the good name of grave-robbers everywhere. There are snuff films with more integrity.” Chiklis, whose career eventually recovered, told James Belushi years later that he took the role out of “love, respect, and homage” for John and apologized for upsetting any members of the family.

Oliver Stone’s stars Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great, the king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. We had no idea that peroxide was so readily available in 285 B.C., but the film’s historical inaccuracies go beyond Farrell’s Miss Clairol locks. Some have noted that Alexander’s homosexual tendencies are blown way out of proportion, while others have pointed out the depictions of Persians, and Easterners in general, to be straight-up wrong. There are four versions of the movie floating around but none of them seemed to impress critics or historians. Alexander was nominated for six Razzies in 2005—including Worst Actor and Worst Director—but didn’t “win” any.

The 2013 biographical drama follows Apple CEO/cult leader Steve Jobs from his college days to the debut of the iPod in 2001. As you might expect from a movie starring That ’70s Show actor Ashton Kutcher, it has the by-the-numbers feel of a TV biopic. Jobs seems to transform from a brat to a cutting-edge entrepreneur overnight in Jobs, so some important details have been omitted in this movie directed by Joshua Michael Stern. Critics largely dismissed Jobs as a lightweight biopic with numerous historical inaccuracies. Whereas Apple zealots will still line up and buy any new device Apple issues a press release for, the same cannot be said for movies about the company’s cofounder.

Everything about the 2016 biopic about singer Nina Simone comes down to casting, and, wow, did the filmmakers blow it. The casting of Afro-Latina star Zoe Saldaña was controversial, especially to Simone Kelly, the daughter of Simone, who said, “My mother was raised at a time when she was told her nose was too wide, her skin was too dark. Appearance-wise this is not the best choice.” Saldaña later admitted that she regretted taking the role in the critically panned movie, saying, “I should have never played Nina. I should have done everything in my power, with the leverage that I had 10 years ago … to cast a Black woman to play an exceptionally perfect Black woman.”

To say that John Wayne—who became an icon playing cowboys—was grossly miscast as Mongol leader Genghis Khan in 1956’s would be the understatement of the century. Not only did Wayne receive a posthumous Golden Turkey Award in the Worst Casting category, the epic historical drama is considered one of the worst films ever made. Even more egregious than the racially insensitive casting is the fact that The Conqueror was filmed downwind from a nuclear testing site in Utah, which may be the reason why a large number of the cast and crew developed cancer afterwards. Talk about box office poison!

It’s challenging to find a movie rocking a 0 percent rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes, but nailed it. The 2018 biographical crime drama directed by Entourage actor Kevin Connolly stars a bewigged John Travolta as New York City mobster John Gotti. The movie was ridiculed for portraying Gotti as a loving family man who only killed for the good of the community. Really? It took eight years, four directors, and 44 producers to make what the New York Post called “the worst mob movie of all time,” which was nominated for six Razzies.