The 21 most revealing celebrity documentaries, ranked

Gaga: Five Foot Two focuses not on Gaga’s early days, her rise to fame, and her sustained success, but rather on a specific window of time: the year that encompassed the run-up to the release of her then-latest album, Joanne, her acclaimed Super Bowl LI performance, and her fibromyalgia diagnosis. Five Foot Two most resembles Madonna: Truth Or Dare, so it feels a bit meta that director Chris Moukarbel devoted a few minutes of screen time to a feud between Mother Monster and the Material Girl.

Tiger Woods’ rise and fall and rise and fall and, well, you get the idea, is so crazy that it took a two-part documentary to explore it all. While we await the inevitable follow-up—because he continues to toggle between redemption and train wreck—this doc delves deep into the troubled golfer’s youth, relationship with his father, messy affairs, comeback efforts, and more. Like most HBO Sports documentaries, Tiger is extremely well produced and mostly tactful, but without its subject, let’s call it a shot over par.

By 2012, Katy Perry was a massive superstar: talented, fun, larger-than-life, cheeky, sexy (and proud of it), adored by millions of fans, and determined to stage colorful, festive concerts. Katy Perry: Part Of Me tracks the 13-time Grammy nominee as she mounts her Part Of Me tour, with lookbacks to her childhood and pop chart ascension, and peeks at how fame and the tour were affecting her personal life (her marriage to comedian Russell Brand ended in 2011). It’s entertaining, visually eye-popping (remember, it was released in 3-D), and Perry does let her guard down occasionally, which all keeps Part Of Me from feeling too much like a well-executed promotional project.

Here’s the thing about documentaries: They can get out of date lickety-split. Just ask Demi Lovato. Only 30 years old, she already boasts three docs to her name: Demi Lovato: Stay Strong (2011), Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated (2017), and Demi Lovato: Dancing With The Devil, a four-part docuseries that dropped in 2021. The candid, if slickly produced, Simply Complicated presented a radiant Lovato as in control of her demons and thriving. Maybe she was at the time, but it all fell apart in 2018, when alcohol and heroin caused her to crash so hard that she suffered a heart attack and three strokes, and reportedly dodged death by less than 10 minutes—all of which Dancing With The Devil explores (along with her recovery). Not surprisingly, the singer-actress swears she’s done with docs.

In 2017, four years before her death at age 87, groundbreaking journalist, author, screenwriter, and editor Joan Didion got the documentary treatment in Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold. And it boasts a particularly personal, familial touch, as her nephew, actor Griffin Dunne, directed the film and posed the questions. Didion, physically frail but unbroken, vividly recounts tales from her career (writing about The Doors, El Salvador, California counterculture, etc.) and life (love, death, crashing through ceilings, etc.). The career aspects fascinate, but the life portions lend the movie its piercing emotional heft. In 2003, Didion lost her 71-year-old husband, the author John Gregory Dunne, to a heart attack, and in 2005, their 39-year-old adopted daughter, Quintana, succumbed to a series of ailments that started not long before her father’s death.

Scottish filmmaker Kevin Macdonald ping pongs between features (The Last King Of Scotland, The Mauritanian) and documentaries (the Oscar-winning One Day In September, Marley, Life In A Day). And in 2018 he directed Whitney, which provides a sad recounting of Whitney Houston’s rise and fall, beginning with her youth in New Jersey through to her earliest hits and her triumphant rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It also spares little when recounting the origins of her drug use, her relationship with best friend and purported girlfriend Robyn Crawford (who did not participate in the doc), her precipitous decline, and her salacious death in a hotel bathtub. Houston’s mother, Cissy, and her co-star in The Bodyguard, Kevin Costner, offer valuable insights, and, not surprisingly, ex-husband Bobby Brown comes across badly (and in denial). Another documentary, Whitney: Can I Be Me, released a year earlier, is also worth checking out.

Long before RuPaul catapulted drag queens into the mainstream, the garish, over-the-top Divine was out there strutting her stuff, chewing the scenery in John Waters cult flicks, entertaining patrons at clubs with her comedy and singing, and, yes, literally eating shit (in Pink Flamingos). The animated and live-action versions of Ursula in The Little Mermaid were partly inspired by Divine, born Harris Glenn Milstead. I Am Divine—which features worthwhile commentary from Waters, Ricki Lake, and Divine’s mother, Frances—pays loving tribute to the often-overlooked actor, who was bullied as a child, bisexual, overweight, and the life of the party. Milstead loved his creation dearly but also craved acceptance as a male actor, a dream unrealized when he died at age 43 in 1988.

In the 1990s—as a teenager past her glory days as the adorable Punky Brewster—Soleil Moon Frye toted a video camera around wherever she went. Little did she know, but she amassed a treasure trove of footage—featuring fellow kid stars (including Leonardo DiCaprio, Sara Gilbert, Charlie Sheen, and Brian Austin Green) living, laughing, hurting, misbehaving, and sowing their oats—that serves as the basis of kid 90. Frye, now in her mid-40s, looks back at that footage (as well as at diary entries and old phone messages), shares it with several of those old friends, tells her survival story, and delivers an intriguing, often harrowing look at child stardom and the Hollywood machine that claimed Jonathan Brandis, Harold Hunter, and others.

Tonya Harding remains an infamous pop culture and sports figure thanks to her involvement in the 1994 attack on fellow Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan. Harding has been the subject of numerous long-form news segments and was played by Margot Robbie in the 2017 feature, I, Tonya. But in 1986, Harding served as the focus of Sharp Edges, a 48-minute video about her then-burgeoning career. Harding was an ambitious, determined, and talented kid, but it’s her mother, LaVona, you can’t stop watching. She’s got her eye on the prize. Anyone who questions Allison Janney’s depiction of LaVona in I, Tonya—physically and otherwise—need only watch Sharp Edges to see just how spot-on it was.

There’s a pattern to even the best celebrity documentaries: glimpses of the star’s past, the (slow or sudden) onset of stardom, the fallout of their fame, the revelations (sometimes carefully parsed, and sometimes unexpectedly candid), the archive footage, and the efforts to wrestle it all down to feature length. Miss Americana checks every box, letting the notoriously private Taylor Swift—as she shifted from superstar to megastar—share as much as she cares to and humanizing her in the process. She’s funny and sweet and ambitious and opinionated, and it’s fascinating to watch as she decides to use her platform to support the LGBTQ+ community and fight for their rights. It’ll be interesting to see if she ever participates in another documentary, as she’s now an ever bigger and more influential star.

The “Free Britney” campaign was in full swing when this unauthorized documentary debuted, and it galvanized public sentiment for Britney Spears, who’d long felt captive by the conservatorship overseen by her father, Jamie Spears—the last person on Earth she wanted handling her affairs. Produced by The New York Times, Framing Britney Spears touches on the singer’s raw talent, child stardom, hyper-sexualization, and love-hate relationship with the paparazzi, along with the cruel jokes made at her expense, her umbrella-wielding breakdown in 2007, and the long conservatorship (which has since ended). Jamie Spears, Diane Sawyer, and Justin Timberlake come off terribly—as they should. And it’s all presented in a taut, unshowy 74 minutes.

At the apex of Pamela Anderson’s fame, few people took her seriously. She was the blonde from Baywatch and Playboy who filled out her red bathing suit like no one since Farrah Fawcett, then she married rocker Tommy Lee, and then she exploded as a tabloid favorite thanks to a private sex tape featuring her and Lee that went very public. Pamela: A Love Story, pegged to her memoir (Love, Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, And Truth), lets Anderson tell her tale. She comes across as sympathetic, smart, world-weary, and resilient. Her time prepping to star on Broadway in Chicago feels triumphant, and the moments when she talks candidly with her son, Brandon (who produced the doc), are unforced and humanizing.

Liz Garbus had quite the year in 2015, directing two acclaimed documentaries, Cousteau and What Happened, Miss Simone? In the latter, Garbus celebrates Nina Simone in all her facets as a singer, a human (dealing with racism, mental issues, and physical abuse), and an activist. So distraught was Simone—born in 1933 in North Carolina as Eunice Kathleen Waymon—over the treatment of African Americans in America that she left the country for good in 1973. Simone died in 2003, so Garbus relies on talking heads (including Simone’s daughter, Lisa), archival interviews with Simone, journal entries, letters, concert footage, and the like to tell the weighty story. It would eventually be nominated for a Best Documentary Academy Award and six Emmys and win a Peabody Award.

Four years after the death of comedy legend Robin Williams, director Marina Zenovich and producer Alex Gibney set about making Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, a respectful, insightful documentary. Zenovich elicits revealing comments from Williams’ family and colleagues (among them Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Martin, Pam Dawber, and Billy Crystal), and includes rarely-seen or never-seen clips that imbue the project with freshness. Still, the viewer more accurately sits beside Williams’ head rather than enters his mind, as we get glimpses of what drove his comedy, addictions, warmth, and manic energy.

Beyoncé herself directed, wrote, and produced Homecoming, which celebrates the fact that, in 2018, she became the first Black woman to headline Coachella. It borders on hagiography, as she shares precious little about her life or family, and it’s more or less a concert film. But as a look at one of the biggest stars on the planet, at the height of both her talent and power, it’s fascinating. She wants everything perfect when she hits the stage and she makes it happen. And, during her show, and thus, in the documentary, she pays tribute to Black culture, Black schools, and the Black female dynamos who inspired her, among them Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison.

Without asking for pity or sympathy, Michael J. Fox introduces us to his life—the good, the bad, and the tragic—in Davis Guggenheim’s honest and heartbreaking Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 1991 at age 29, seems to spare very little as we watch him occasionally stumble and search for words as an awful, degenerative condition slowly overwhelms his body. Guggenheim also takes us through Fox’s career on Family Ties and Back To The Future, and it’s not lost on the viewer that such a boyish, smiling, and perpetually moving actor would be brought low in this way. Guggenheim also introduces us to Fox’s wife and children, who prove themselves to be the rock that Fox can steady himself upon whenever needed. The intimate and poignant Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie shows this 5-time Emmy award winner moving in different—yet more important—ways.

Michael Jackson wanted his kids to see their dad perform live, so he pushed himself to prepare for a run of shows at the O2 Arena in London during the summer of 2009. Director-choreographer Kenny Ortega collaborated with Jackson and filmed endless hours of rehearsals at the Staples Center in L.A. After Jackson died on June 25, Ortega—controversially—culled the footage into Michael Jackson’s This Is It, something resembling a concert film, or at least a dress rehearsal film. Though exhausted and frightfully thin, Jackson summoned his old magic whenever a beat dropped. However, the Jackson family was never happy with the doc, claiming that it tastelessly exploited the late singer who had died only four months earlier. Still, as a document of what might have been, This Is It shows MJ singing, dancing, and bonding with his band and dancers, who all look crestfallen when word reaches them that Jackson died.

The World’s A Little Blurry captures Billie Eilish as she exploded on the scene as music’s dark, snarky, opinionated, and supremely talented teen sensation. R.J. Cutler’s cameras witness it all: the first blushes of success, the pressure-induced meltdowns, the boy trouble, the conversations with her parents, her maiden drive in her first car, fangirling over Justin Bieber, and especially her close bond with brother Finneas, her biggest supporter and closest collaborator. Speaking of bond, or Bond, watching Eilish and Finneas work together to craft the 007 theme song “No Time to Die” is a thrill.

“Sometimes I feel like an accident/people look when they’re passin’ it,” Gomez sings in the documentary Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me’s titular tune. “Never check on the passenger/they just want the free show.” This doc, with the pop star and actress front and center, checks on the passenger. What started out as a Gomez film akin to Madonna: Truth Or Dare or Gaga: Five Foot Two, evolved into something more, with director Alek Keshishian—who directed Truth Or Dare three decades ago—delivering something much richer, touching, and informative. Gomez—dealing with lupus, bipolar disorder, and ex-boyfriend Justin Bieber’s engagement to Hailey Baldwin—reveals herself as vulnerable as hell, brave, relatable, and … hopeful. The last lyrics of “My Mind & Me” say it all: “If somebody sees me like this, then they won’t feel alone now.”

Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays In The Picture, Moonage Daydream) directed this tough-love doc about the late, great, and deeply troubled Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain. Frances Bean Cobain, the singer’s daughter with Courtney Love, executive produced it and gave Morgen access to unreleased music and previously unseen journal entries and home movies. Cobain spun all sorts of wild stories about himself during his brief 27 years on Earth, so he’s a bit of an unreliable narrator. And Morgen focuses a great deal on Cobain’s final chapters rather than his creative peak with Nirvana. Still, Cobain: Montage Of Heck packs a punch.

Equally adept at features (The Warrior) and documentaries (Senna), director Asif Kapadia—with the Oscar-winning Amy—set his sights on capturing the essence of the deeply troubled and seemingly doomed singer Amy Winehouse. Comments from family, friends, and associates paint a picture of a sweet young woman in way over her head and prone to self-destructive choices, while concert footage and previously unheard songs and unseen videos confirm Winehouse’s prodigious talent. It’s heartbreaking to watch Winehouse pull it together just long enough to record a duet with the late Tony Bennett, only for her to fall apart again soon thereafter. And, daringly, Kapadia doesn’t flinch from examining Winehouse’s final days, her death, and what was and wasn’t done to prevent it.