The 25 best sports biopics

“That’s entertainment.” Robert DeNiro famously packed on seventy pounds mid-shoot to portray middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta as both a strapping young fighter and a doughy, out-to-pasture has-been. At every stage of his career, LaMotta was a physically and mentally abusive lout, which makes Martin Scorsese’s unflinching masterpiece a film that’s a lot easier to admire than to watch.

“Hoosiers” director David Anspaugh sticks closer to the underdog facts for his chronicle of Rudy Ruettiger’s quixotic quest to play football for his beloved Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Sean Astin is perfectly cast as the bullheaded Rudy, a practice squad member who finally gets his wish in the final game of his final year of eligibility. Jerry Goldsmith’s uplifting score swells as Rudy is carried off the field to cheers.

Before Anthony Perkins gave the world nightmares as the psychotic Norman Bates, he turned in a sensitive, heartbreaking portrayal of Boston Red Sox outfielder Jimmy Piersall in Robert Mulligan’s "Fear Strikes Out." Piersall’s public struggle with bipolar disorder was ongoing at the time of the film’s 1957 release, and he would continue to battle his illness on the field until his retirement in 1967.

Up-and-coming heavyweight boxer James J. Braddock was nearing a shot at the title when he broke his hand in a 1929 fight. Braddock’s struggles coincided with the start of the Great Depression, which forced the brawler to work long hours as a longshoreman. His stirring comeback from obscurity inspired the nation, and, seventy years later, was turned into an immensely satisfying film starring Russell Crowe, who punches people rather convincingly.

The “Miracle on Ice” at the 1980 Winter Olympics was more than just an upset. In beating he heavily favored hockey professionals of the U.S.S.R. national team, the college kids of Team USA scored a symbolic victory for a country desperate to shake off the misery of the Vietnam War, Watergate and the energy crisis. This standard-issue biopic hits all the rousing notes, and is elevated by Kurt Russell’s hard-nosed portrayal of coach Herb Brooks.

Though Gayle Sayers and Brian Piccolo competed for the same running back position on the Chicago Bears, the men became the best of friends. That bond only grew stronger when Piccolo was diagnosed with cancer. Billy Dee Williams and James Caan are perfectly cast as Sayers and Piccolo in this classic TV movie. If you’re not a sobbing mess by the end of the film, you are an insensate monster.

The original GOAT gets an unconventional biopic from master filmmaker Michael Mann that dishes out Muhammad Ali’s backstory within the first twelve minutes as he’s preparing to weigh in for his life-altering 1964 fight with Sonny Liston. It’s a mesmerizing sequence that sets the tone for a ruminative retelling of fall and and rise, concluding with his improbable knock out of George Foreman to reclaim the heavyweight title in 1974.  

All together now: “Today… I consider myself… the luckiest man… on the face of the Earth.” This classic baseball biopic about the cut-too-short life of “Iron Man” Lou Gehrig is aggressively kind-hearted and relentlessly corny, but, then again, so was the power hitting New York Yankees first baseman. Gary Cooper is aw-shucks perfection as Gehrig, whose career was cut short by his ALS diagnosis. The final speech at Yankee Stadium was restructured to emphasize the “luckiest man” line, but that’s just good mythmaking.

Laura Hillenbrand’s bestseller about the horse that loved to run from behind gets the Hollywood treatment, and finds the finish line thanks to superb performances from Jeff Bridges, Tobey Maguire and Chris Cooper. The Great Depression setting raises the underdog stakes, and it all pays off in rousing style with a triumph on the track at Santa Anita.

Hugh Hudson’s low-key uplift centers on British Olympians Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, two runners from very different backgrounds who go on to win gold medals at the 1924 Olympiad. It’s a quiet, yet richly rewarding film that is best known today for Vangelis's pulsating synth score and for scoring a Best Picture upset over Warren Beatty’s heavily favored "Reds."

Billy Crystal pours every ounce of his New York Yankees fandom into this well-directed depiction of the single-season home run race between pinstripe teammates Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. Thomas Jane is all rowdy charm as the hard-drinking, chronically injured Maris, while Barry Pepper gives a beautifully understated performance as the modest and withdrawn Maris.

Denzel Washington is ideal casting as no-nonsense coach Herman Boone, who was charged with bringing together the newly integrated T.C. Williams High School football team. If historical accuracy is your thing, you might want to look elsewhere, as Gregory Allen Howard’s screenplay takes massive liberties. But as a piece of stand-up-and-cheer cinema, it works.

The rise of the sabermetrics nerds! Brad Pitt stars as Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane, who upended decades of eyeball-test baseball scouting with his advanced statistical measurement of an individual player’s value to the team. Directed by Bennett Miller, the screenplay is unmistakably the work of Aaron Sorkin, and his epigrammatic dialogue gives the film an appropriately brainy charge.

Based on Tom Wolfe’s Esquire profile of stock car racing legend Junior Johnson, Lamont Johnson’s “The Last American Hero” hits the mark as an authentic (if not always accurate), non-stereotypical depiction of Southern culture. Jeff Bridges plays Junior Jackson (a rights issue prohibited the use of Johnson’s name) as a good ol’ boy moonshine runner with something to prove, and he’s absolutely sensational.

Ron Shelton’s biopic couldn’t be more different than his minor league masterpiece “Bull Durham.” It stars Tommy Lee Jones as a late-in-life Ty Cobb attempting to bully his biographer into writing a hagiographic take on his life that included a ferocity – often to detriment of teammates and family – off the field that was only matched by his passion on it. It’s a fierce and unsettling film, a corrosive spiritual companion to Scorsese’s “Raging Bull.”

Director Robert Wise and screenwriter Ernest Lehman define “Hollywood craftsmanship,” so it’s no surprise that this biopic of middleweight champion Rocky Graziano still plays today despite its traditional rags-to-riches structure. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Wise cast a young and strapping Paul Newman as Graziano. Keep your eyes peeled for an even younger Steve McQueen in a bit part.

Hollywood is the ultimate copycat town, but while you can understand why studios would rush competing killer asteroid or volcano movies into production, the dueling late-1990s biopics about long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine remain a head scratcher. Both were box office bombs, but Robert Towne’s “Without Limits” starring Billy Crudup deserved better. Donald Sutherland is terrific as Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman, who went on to co-found a little shoe manufacturer called Nike.

This biopic about the life of Shirley Muldowney, aka “The First Lady of Drag Racing”, sheds unique insight on the world of funny car racing. Directed by Jonathan Kaplan, it’s a hugely underrated subculture movie that’s powered by a pair of winning performances by Bonnie Bedelia (as Muldowney) and Beau Bridges (as legendary drag man Connie Kalitta).

Ostensibly a biopic about light welterweight boxer “Irish” Micky Ward, this David O. Russell movie works best when it’s focused on Micky’s brother, Dicky, who’s brought to vibrantly addled life by Christian Bale. The performance earned Bale a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. It’s one of the most painfully realistic depictions of a has-been pugilist ever put to film.

“L.A. Confidential” screenwriter Brian Helgeland wrote and directed this reverent dramatization of Jackie Robinson breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier. It’s a paint-by-numbers biopic, but Chadwick Boseman’s internalized portrayal of Robinson is effectively offset by Harrison Ford’s gruff old man go at Brooklyn Dodgers’ executive Branch Rickey.

Biopic specialist Peter Morgan has won acclaim for his screenplays for “The Queen” and “Frost/Nixon”, but his adaptation of David Peace’s “The Damned Utd” is a soccer lover’s dream. Directed by “The King’s Speech” Oscar winner Tom Hooper, the film features a pair of dazzling performances from Michael Sheen as Leeds United manager Brian Clough and Colm Meaney as his antagonist Don Revie.

Bennett Miller returned to the sports biopic after "Moneyball" with this unsettling account of John E. du Pont’s relationship with wrestlers Mark and Dave Schultz. Steve Carell is chilling as the multimillionaire du Pont who invites the young men to train at his estate. It’s about as far from inspiring as a sports movie can get.

Long-distance runner Louis Zamperini was known as the Torrance Tornado for his athletic accomplishments at USC and the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but his remarkable life story was just beginning. Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken” starts with Zemperini’s sporting exploits, but devotes the majority of its running time to his unthinkable ordeal during World War II. The man survived forty-seven days at sea in shark-infested waters, and the worst was yet to come. And he stuck it out until 2014, when he passed away at the age of ninety-seven. That right there is a life.

Director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan combined their sports biopic expertise for this exhilarating examination of the fierce rivalry between Formula 1 racers James Hunt and Niki Lauda. The dramatic tension seems to have fueled the competitive acting juices of Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl, who go at their roles with tremendous gusto.

You can’t go wrong with Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca”) directing Burt Lancaster, though it might’ve been nice had the filmmakers found someone less WASP-y than Lancaster to play the trailblazing Native American athlete Jim Thorpe. If you can get past exceptionally white man playing Thorpe, this film is a top-notch biopic of an American sports legend.