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 SmithIt was a horrific story, grippingly told first in hiker Aron Ralston’s book Between a Rock and a Hard Place and then by James Franco in the Oscar-nominated film 127 Hours. In case you’ve been living under a rock (sorry!) and don’t know Ralston’s tale, he was an outdoorsman who went canyoneering without telling anyone where he was going—and then got trapped when a boulder pinned his arm against the canyon wall. After five days, sure that he was on the verge of dying, he did something most of us couldn’t even imagine: He amputated his right arm with a dull tool. He was rescued hours later and lived to tell his incredible story of survival. Ralston has said that the movie is “so factually accurate it is as close to a documentary as you can get and still be a drama.” Ralston continues to climb mountains and canyons, and has become a motivational speaker.