biopic
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of biopic
1950–55; bio(graphy) + (motion) pic(ture)
Explanation
A biopic is a fictional film that's based on a true story of a famous person. If you develop a cure for cancer or get elected president, someone may make a biopic about you one day! Biopic is a shorthand term for biographical (moving) picture that's been around since the 1950s. Some of these films stick very closely to the biography of their subject, in an attempt to tell a true story of a real person. Others take great liberties with the biographical details in order to make a more interesting plot. Either way, if you like movies about historical figures, movie stars, and sports legends, you should check out some biopics!
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Recently, one of my best friends asked me if I’d seen “Michael,” Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic that Salon’s movie critic Coleman Spilde hailed as “so damn weird.”
From Salon • May 14, 2026
British music star FKA twigs is to play Josephine Baker in a new biopic of the Roaring Twenties icon who became a hero of the French Resistance and the American civil rights movement.
From Barron's • May 12, 2026
According to the film's producers, the biopic covers how football became "the young boy's only escape from his tough home life".
From BBC • May 12, 2026
Instead of returning for the blockbuster’s sequel, Vince opts to pursue his passion project, the Pablo Escobar biopic “Medellin.”
From Los Angeles Times • May 11, 2026
As luck would have it, though, the only English-language film being shown in Belgrade was Lust for Life, the lush biopic of the mad nineteenth-century Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
