Movies and books about impostors and compulsive liars

The Devil’s Advocate (1997)

The Apprentice (2024)

I don’t understand the question, and I refuse to answer it.

[italic]The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality,[/italic] by psychiatrist Hervey M. Cleckley.

And there's a series of fascinating old (1940s-'60s) psychiatric interviews of psychopathic patients on YT. Compulsively watchable.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? from 2018 was a good one. Melissa McCarthy (as the biographer/forger Lee Israeli) and Richard E. Grant, as her gay bestie, earned their Oscar nods. Jane Curtin and Anna Deavere Smith turn up in smaller roles, as does Justin Vivian Bond (or did I dream that?) as a nightclub singer. Too stoned to look it up right now.

It's been around for a number of years now but Gone Girl is one of the best. Rosamund Pike was perfect in the main character's role in the movie and was robbed of the Oscar.

The Great Imposter with Tony Curtis.

Liar Liar, of course.

Well - I did read a lot about Anastasia Romanov when I was younger. The book “Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson” is really detailed and quite gripping.

It’s very mysterious how some Polish factory worker (Franziska Schanzkowska) was able to impersonate a Russian noble so successfully. We know so little about what her actual past and motivations were.

But she was able to do many difficult things, like never falter in the various, complicated ways a royal addresses and introduces dignitaries and other people of rank. Today you could perhaps watch some YouTube videos and maybe grasp it - but how did she gain this information? She seemed to have inside information about court intrigues that were not public knowledge. Her handwriting and even the structure of her ears were like Anastasia Romanov‘s.

What was this woman’s interior life?? How did she get there??

It's not a movie, but this interview with Anna Delvery is very entertaining.

Reemphasizing you must delve.

No thank you. They would remind of my second (and so far final) husband, who caused me to lose everything I owned.

The Grifters.

Reversal of Fortune

Rien Ne Va Plus

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Maria Konnikova's The Confidence Game (which is about con artists more broadly)

The Usual Suspects

Single White Female

All About Eve.