Michael Oher says he never saw any profits from the film

Rags-to-riches stories are ten-a-penny in Hollywood, but there was something about Michael Oher's life story that attracted people's attention.

The film, which Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for, portrayed the story of NFL footballer Michael Oher, and how his adoptive parents Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy helped steer him to American football fame and glory despite his troubled upbringing.

Now, however, Oher alleges that the Tuohy's did not actually adopt him, but tricked him into signing conservatorship papers when he was 18 that allowed them to make business decisions on his behalf.

He has filed a court petition that also claims that he never saw any profits from the film, but the Tuohys and their two birth children got $225,000 each plus 2.5% of defined net proceeds - despite previously saying that the received a flat fee and divided profits equally between all five members of the family. The film made $309 at the box office globally.

The court papers filed by Oher, now 37, claim that he only learned this information in February of this year. The film was released in 2009.

"The lie of Michael’s adoption is one upon which Co-Conservators Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy have enriched themselves at the expense of their Ward, the undersigned Michael Oher," the court filing read. "Michael Oher discovered this lie to his chagrin and embarrassment in February of 2023, when he learned that the Conservatorship to which he consented on the basis that doing so would make him a member of the Tuohy family, in fact provided him no familial relationship with the Tuohys."

Sport was a saviour for Oher during his childhood and high school years. One of 12 children, he was sent to a series of foster homes after his mother struggled with drug addiction and his father later died in prison. He was taken in by the Tuohys as a teenager, but says that at the time he signed the conservatorship papers, he was told it was no different to being adopted. However - as we have learned from Britney Spears' recent high-profile wrangling with her own conservatorship - it means that you do not have control of your own financial affairs.

Oher has asked the court to end the conservatorship, ban the Tuohys from using his name and likeness, and for them to pay him his share of profits as well as compensatory and punitive damages.

The Tuohys have not publicly responded as yet.

Oher, meanwhile, has recently released a new book 'When Your Back's Against the Wall'.