Top 10 Biopics

Sean Penn stars as Harvey Milk—America's first major openly gay politican—in Gus Van Sant's new biopic Milk. TIME looks back at 80 years of "Based on the life of..." films.

Malcolm X (1992)

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Originally slated to be directed by Norman Jewison, a white man, Malcolm X soon became a Spike Lee joint after the director personally lobbied Jewison and convinced him that only a black director could make the film. It's difficult to imagine anyone else having made this movie. While some minimized it as a unadventurous, straightforward telling of X's life, the fact that a three-hour-plus movie about a still-controversial black leader was even made—Lee had to ask wealthy African American entertainers to help him finance the film—is incredibly impressive. Witness the fact that a Martin Luther King Jr. biopic has yet to be made. Who alive has the guts to do that?

See TIME's 1992 interview with Spike Lee

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