Looking Back
Hot Gallery: These Stars Have Made Headlines—and Played Real-Life Newsmakers, Too
They’re newsmakers without even trying. We’re talking about the innovators, politicians, activists, heroes and, yes, villains who inspire headlines. We know their stories; but that just makes casting them that much harder. Here they are: Newsmakers and the stars who have tackled their stories onscreen. By Nina Hämmerling Smith
ADH- GLOBE PHOTOS, INC., FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Denzel Washington as Malcolm X in Malcolm X; Activist Malcolm X
One of the most important figures in American history, Malcolm X also wrote one of the nation’s most influential autobiographies (with Alex Haley). It was this source material that inspired the 1992 movie Malcolm X, the three-plus-hour (!) account of the activist’s life, incarceration, ideological journey and assassination. Denzel Washington managed to not only look and sound like Malcolm X—according to director Spike Lee, it was something more: “It might sound like some hocus-pocus voodoo stuff, but … it was spooky because that was Malcolm there. That was not Denzel.”
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