Blind side what is true

The film showed that Oher had a tough upbringing, which included a lack of blood relatives in his life and periods of time spent living on the streets. To explain his life from start to finish would take a lot more than two hours. This made her an unsuitable guardian for him and his 11 siblings, who were taken out of her care by child protective services.

This is why Oher ended up in foster care in Oslo, Tennessee, which was depicted in the famous film. But what about his father? Was he even in the picture? Most therapists would agree that having a good male role model, biological or otherwise, is good for young kids who are learning how to pave their way in the world. But Oher lacked a stable father figure because his dad was often in and out of prison. And sadly, his father lost his life while he was serving time behind bars, which had a significant effect on the future football player.

In the film, the Tuohy family finds Michael Oher standing in the middle of a major rainstorm, soaking wet and depressed from recent events. He was freezing because his clothes were all wet from the rain. In fact, it took a lot longer for the family to welcome Oher into their home than the movie depicts.

According to Oher, Leigh Anne Tuohy paid him a visit at school the day after the family saw him standing in the rain. She then bought him some new clothes to make sure he would never find himself in that situation again. But none of this happened in an instant as was shown in the film, and there were other obstacles between Oher and the Tuohy family than the film portrayed. But for the most part, the film steers clear of any racial tension, even though in real life, the situation surrounding the topic was much less cut and dry.

A few other people who knew the Tuohy's had some vocal opinions about the new addition to their family. The tensions between Oher and his adopted family are expected with any late in life adoption, but the movie left out most of the details of the experience. The Tuohy family embraced Oher as a son and a sibling to their other kids as soon as he was adopted by them. There were a lot of emotional hurdles that both Oher and his adoptive parents had to overcome to eventually become a warm and nurturing family.

Oher and his adoptive family experienced tension in the beginning of his entrance into their lives and at times, both sides started to wonder if this was the right fit. It took time for them to bond and get to know each other, but one thing was certain, it was a much better situation for Oher than he had previously.

Hollywood thought that Quinton Aaron was the perfect actor to portray Oher. After all, Aaron and Oher have comparable builds and are about the same height.

They also stand in similar ways, too. Aaron won the role not only because he could act, but because he could bring Oher's story to life in a realistic manner. But there was one thing that made the two men different, and audiences might not have even noticed it when they saw the movie on the big screen. Aaron was born in Otherwise, the casting would have been flawless. But there were other disparities in the film that were too big to ignore, and Aaron had nothing to do with them.

Even his great acting chops couldn't mask the fact that the writers of the film simply got a few things wrong. She pushed him and encouraged him with tough love throughout the story of the film. All of this led to his success in football. Being one of twelve children growing up in the projects, the real Michael Oher never had his own bed. Like Sandra Bullock's character does in the movie, Leigh Anne bought him a futon to sleep on since her husband told her that the larger pro athletes use them if they can't find a bed big enough.

As in the movie, most people who knew Michael Oher referred to him as "Big Mike". This included the people he knew back in Hurt Village where he grew up and the people he met at Briarcrest Christian School. This was grossly exaggerated in the movie. Michael did not have to learn how to play football, and Leigh Anne never walked onto the practice field to inspire Michael by telling him to protect his team as if he was protecting their family.

The film's suggestion that he needed to be taught how to play football upset the real Michael Oher, "That part right there, it really got me because it was never like that. I've always known how to play the game of football. I've always had a passion for the game. You know, it's Hollywood, so I mean that's what they do, but at the end of the day it's still a good story. It's impossible. Either you have that toughness and aggression or you don't. As the real Michael Oher stated above, he already knew how to play football.

Sean Jr. Actor Jay Head, who portrays S. The real S. He was by no means the pipsqueak that we see onscreen. Michael and S. As Michael Lewis states in his book, when racist fans were taunting him, the real Michael Oher flipped them the bird. During a scrimmage against a team from Munford, the defensive end who lined up across from Michael delivered a hefty dose of trash talk with every play, threatening Michael and calling him fat.

Like in the movie, when the opportunity arose during a play later in the game, Michael lifted his trash talking opponent up by his pads and began to carry him off the field, through the Munford bench, across the cinder track and toward his bus.

In real life, Michael got the Munford player up to the fence but not over it unlike what we see in the movie before a group of Munford players piled on top of him. Unsure what penalty to call, the refs penalized Michael for "excessive blocking", the same unusual penalty called in the movie.

The real Collins Tuohy never had to overcome taunting at school because of Michael staying with her family. Collins Tuohy, an honor student, rearranged her entire class schedule in order to help Michael. She dropped all of her AP advanced placement classes to be in Michael's English and math classes, so that she could understand what his assignments were. She spent several hours at night helping him with his homework.

Collins isn't quite as timid as her onscreen counterpart and being seen with Michael at school was never an issue. She was a cheerleader and he played football, and they both were on the track team together Huckabee. In the movie, Leigh Anne's Sandra Bullock friends ask her intrusive questions about Michael during a lunch gathering.

Leigh Anne faced countless questions from people she encountered at shops, restaurants and school events, all typically asking, "How have you handled it? Eventually, Leigh Anne let her opinion of this line of questioning be known, "You just need to mind your own business.

You worry about your own life and I'll worry about mine," she said. Yes, but in real life this happened on a regular basis, as Sean Tuohy pointed out in an interview. But if we were going to spend time with him, we'd come eat at the table. We haven't eaten at the table since he left," Sean stated jokingly. Gang members never taunted Leigh Anne. However, once when she was dropping Michael off after taking him clothes shopping, he did tell her to stay in the car like his character does in the movie.

The main gang member in the movie, Alton, is loosely based on Delvin Lane, the leader of a gang that hung around the Hurt Village housing projects. As emphasized somewhat in the movie, Michael never associated with such individuals. His closest friend from his old neighborhood was Craig Vail, whom he often told the Tuohy's about and later brought to their home.

Craig was a person Michael could trust, who never expected or asked for anything. The actual photo is shown on the right. Like in the movie, Leigh Anne says that her cousin called her to ask her about the photo. Who's the black boy in the Christmas card? In real life, Sue Mitchell spoke about her routine with Michael, "We worked hours and hours every day. He would come home, he'd take a shower and we would work until at least every night.

And we did this six nights a week. Sue was a retired public school teacher and cheerleading coach. It's true that Sue Mitchell was turned down a job at Briarcrest Christian School because she didn't share their religious beliefs. It's also true that she was a liberal, to which the real Sean Tuohy replied, "We had a black son before we had a Democrat friend!

In the movie, a distracted Michael Oher Quinton Aaron doesn't see a landscaping truck backing out in front of him as he and S. The Blind Side true story reveals that the accident actually happened in icy conditions when Michael's truck skidded across the divide traveling at 25 miles per hour and crashed head-on into a big van, which was also moving at 25 miles per hour.

When Leigh Anne first arrived on the scene of the accident, she approached Michael who was sobbing uncontrollably to the point she could hardly understand what he was trying to tell her. In addition to blood being on his shirt, S.

Surprisingly, despite the swelling, no bones were broken. When Leigh Anne came home from the hospital, she delivered the news that S. It was then that Michael held out his arm to show Leigh Anne the unsightly burn mark that ran down the length of it. He also has seven years experience serving as a broadcast analyst on radio programs at Ole Miss, in addition to working on national broadcasts for Westwood One and CBS Radio.

In , he was drafted by the New Jersey Nets but instead opted to continue his career overseas before returning to the US to be with his father during his final days. Although it's not focused on in the movie, Michael Oher's basketball talent made him runner-up high school Player of the Year in Tennessee.

The southeastern conference SEC coaches who appear in the movie are portrayed by the actual coaches who recruited Michael Oher. Michael had nothing but D's and F's until the end of his junior year. In his book "I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness to the Blind Side and Beyond," Oher credits some of his 11 siblings with protecting him when he was a child — he was his mother's sixth child.

He also says that even though he and his siblings feared social workers because they didn't want to be separated , he now appreciates that his case worker did their best to not let him slip through the cracks. And although some of his foster homes were "less than ideal," as Oher put it in the book, some provided at least a measure of security.

However, he would still try to run away to find his mom. The movie does show that before Oher met the Tuohys, he was staying with an athletic coach from his public housing complex in Hurt Village, Tony Henderson Hamilton in the movie , who helped Oher get into a private high school.

In real life, it was Briarcrest Christian School , not Wingate. But that focus still pulls attention away from other people in his life who did try to help him, including his own family and people from his community. Michael Oher has one main issue with the Hollywoodized version of his life. Namely, it's the film's implication that he's unintelligent, rather than "a kid who had never had consistent academic instruction and ended up thriving once he got it," he wrote in " I Beat the Odds.

Jae Head.