The Oscars 2011: How real are the reality-based Best Picture nominees?

Oscar has always loved films based on true stories – 100 out of 485 Best Picture nominees since 1927 would qualify – but never more than this year. Four of the 10 features on the Best Picture slate are based on real characters and events: “The King’s Speech,” “The Fighter,” “The Social Network,” and “127 Hours.”

Eavesdrop on departing moviegoers and you will inevitably hear, “I’d love to know what really happened.” Here are some facts behind the “true-life” stories contending for this year’s Best Picture Academy Award.

- Gloria Goodale, Staff writer

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Actors Jesse Eisenberg (l.) and Joseph Mazzello are shown in a scene from The Social Network, the movie based on the story of Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook. (Merrick Morton/Columbia Pictures/AP)

“The Social Network”

Much has been written about the dramatic liberties screenwriter Aaron Sorkin took with the story of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, who launched his now-multibillion-dollar business while still a Harvard undergraduate.

While Mr. Sorkin chose to create what he calls a “metaphor,” depicting the young tech whiz as a loner and a social nerd, the truth is quite different. Far from being painfully dumped, Mr. Zuckerberg is still with the same longtime girlfriend. More important, he was not motivated to create Facebook from a sense of alienation and isolation, but as an expression of his own desire to see the world connected, say both Zuckerberg and those who have known him for a long time.

Facebook now has more than 600 million global members and counting, and Zuckerberg himself, now the nation’s youngest billionaire and Time magazine's Person of the Year, has pledged to give away half his wealth during his lifetime.