10 Movies Based On True Stories (That Were Total Lies)

4. A Beautiful Mind

A Beautiful Mind is a movie about a really smart Russell Crowe. Playing a man named John Forbes Nash - in a film that purports to be "based on a true story"- who spends his time working on governing dynamics and also having really weird hallucinations about cracking codes for the government (among other, even weirder things). He eventually goes mad until he finally gets help and learns to ignore all the not normal stuff going on in his "beautiful mind."

Or that's what happens in the movie, at least, 'cause it sure didn't go down that way in real life.

The biggest difference between actual reality and director Ron Howard's telling of Nash's interesting life story is the fact that he never had hallucinations. Given that these hallucinations make up a fairly large portion of the movie, then, it seems a little underhanded to rely so heavily on a conceit with no actual basis. Nash did experience voices in his head, but that's all he experienced - voices. He wasn't spending his days imagining up Paul Bettany or Ed Harris, nor did his wife stick by his side like she does in the film - they divorced in 1963.