Production notes

Producer Gail Mutrux handed Bill Condon a biography of Kinsey in 1999 to spark his interest in writing a screenplay. Condon then based his original screenplay on elements in the biography combined with his own original research on Kinsey. Ian McKellen was at one point in negotiations for a supporting role.

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 90% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 196 reviews, with an average rating of 7.66/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "A biopic of the sex researcher is hailed as adventurous, clever, and subversive, with fine performances by Liam Neeson and Laura Linney." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100 based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Reviewing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave Kinsey four out of four stars and hailed it as a "fascinating bio" whose strength lies in "the clarity it brings to its title character ... a complete original, a person of intelligence and extremes", as well as how it "captures its times, and a political and moral climate of fear and repression". Ebert compared Neeson's performance to that of Russell Crowe in the 2001 biopic A Beautiful Mind. The film grossed $10,254,979 domestically and $16,918,723 worldwide on an $11 million budget.

Kinsey was listed on many critics' top ten lists for 2004.