Geeks in film

West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin is reportedly working on a script about social networking phenomenon Facebook. Lucky, then, that Hollywood has a long and complicated history with technology – here we look at some of the greatest geeks to grace the silver screen.
  
  


Pirates of Silicon Valley
Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates and Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs acted out the early years of the rivalry between Microsoft and Apple in Pirates of Silicon Valley, a 1999 made-for-TV film. Wyle later impersonated Jobs for the beginning of his New York Macworld keynote speech in summer of 1999. Photograph: Everett Collection / Rex Features
War Games
Based on a real-life hacking event, Matthew Broderick and girlfriend Ally Sheedy break in to the US defence department's computers and nearly trigger a global thermonuclear war in War Games. Photograph: Ronald Grant
Sneakers
Often reckoned to be the most accurate depiction of hacking on screen, Sneakers had Robert Redford leading a team that bugged and broke into computer systems. Photograph: Cine Text / Allstar
Jurassic Park
Jeff Goldblum was the mathematician who warned of the dangers of Jurassic Park, which features the less-than-believable circumnavigation of a Unix password system via the GUI by a pre-teen girl. Photograph: Universal
Rogue Trader
Rogue Trader depicts the real-life exploits of Nick Leeson, played by Ewan McGregor, who used dummy accounts at Barings Bank to cover his losses – and bankrupted it. Photograph: Pathe
A Beautiful Mind
Russell Crowe plays John Nash, the brilliant mathematician who did ground-breaking work in crytography before almost succumbing to madness, in A Beautiful Mind Photograph: Universal
Enigma
Dougray Scott plays one of the codebreakers of Bletchley Park during the second world war, trying to break German codes using mechanical computers, in Enigma. Photograph: Buena Vista International
Antitrust
Ryan Phillippe plays a computer programmer who is hired by a Bill Gates-like tycoon aiming to complete his global communications system synapse in 2001's Antitrust Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext Collection
Mission: Impossible III
Benji, played by British geek poster-boy Simon Pegg, is the computer whiz who comes to the aid of super-spies Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and Luther (Ving Rhames) in Mission: Impossible III Photograph: Paramount Pictures
21
Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth are part of a group of MIT maths geniuses who count cards to take millions of dollars from Las Vegas casinos in 21. Photograph: Allstar Collection/Columbia
The Facebook movie
So who should play Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, left? We think that Lee Pace, the pieman from Pushing Daisies, would be a perfect fit. Photograph: Rex Features / Warner Bros
 

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