The Real Story: Matthew McConaughey's film is based on the real story of Ron Woodroof, an AIDS patient who started a buy-in club for alternative treatments in the '80s and was the subject of a profile in The Dallas Morning News in 1992.
How the Movie Differs: The filmmakers have been open about the fact that they took some liberties with the story in order to create a more engaging plot. For one thing, Woodroof claimed that he knew he had AIDS well before 1985. The other main characters — Rayon, played by Jared Leto, and Dr. Eve Sacks, played by Jennifer Garner — were also not based on real people and were instead invented or pieced together from other people in Woodroof's real-life circle.
