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PLAYING JACKHollywood has always thought of Bruce Greenwood as a solid supporting actor. Now he's got the biggest role of his career--as JFK during the Cuban Missle Crisis. Can a nice guy from Vancouver deliver a blockbuster? by TIMOTHY TAYLOR |
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Bruce Greenwood at Chez Jay in Santa Monica, California, November 2000
Bruce Greenwood is being briefed by his publicist, Julie Nathanson, in the lobby of the Creative Artists Agency (caa). The powerful Beverly Hills talent brokerage -- housed in postmodern splendour in a cream marble building at the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica in Beverly Hills -- has just played host to a screening of Greenwood's new film, Thirteen Days, for members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. These are the people who hand out the Golden Globes -- considered bellwethers for the Academy Awards -- and so this is a rather important night for Greenwood and the movie.
Thirteen Days is about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kevin Costner is the star, playing Kenny O'Donnell, special aide to the president, a man who bore close-up witness to the events that took place in the White House during the crisis and through whose eyes this story is told. Greenwood plays John F. Kennedy. It is without question his biggest Hollywood role to date and one that could seriously jack his position in the Hollywood celebritocracy.
Greenwood is a Canadian -- Quebec-born, Vancouver-raised -- and enjoys a heavy reputation with cinephiles for his portrayals of damaged characters in the Atom Egoyan films The Sweet Hereafter and Exotica. His reputation in Hollywood is somewhat different. Here, he's a veteran character actor, a reliable supporting man in commercial films like the hit thriller Double Jeopardy, with Tommy Lee Jones and Ashley Judd, and Rules of Engagement, his recent film with Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. And while it may be logical to think that his Hollywood profile came after he transplanted himself and left his art-house reputation behind in Canada, this is not the case with Greenwood. He moved to L.A. in 1983 and has developed these two seemingly competing reputations happily in tandem.
The significance of his role in Thirteen Days is that it puts him next to megastar Costner, certainly, but it is also linked to the fact that he's playing an American icon during the historically epic tension of those critical days in October, 1962. It's a big film -- reportedly costing $80 million before promotions -- combining elements of the action genre and the political thriller in the telling of one of America's favourite heroic tales. If Greenwood's JFK is well received -- and it must be said that in character, in voice, and in costume, Greenwood's resemblance to Kennedy is extraordinary -- his profile will soar.
If Greenwood's JFK is
well received - and
in character, in voice,
and in costume, his
resemblence to Kennedy
is extraordinary --
his profile will soarAnd so tonight, to help in the promotion of the film, Greenwood is listening carefully to Nathanson. She is describing the various players in the room Greenwood must hit. Greenwood is surveying the crowd, picking up on Nathanson's cues.
Around us mill the members of the association, sipping San Pellegrinos and Chardonnays. They are entertainment writers for foreign publications who live in Los Angeles, and they form a typically well-dressed L.A. assembly, slipping out to the wide marble entranceway of the caa building to have their smokes and talk on their cellphones. Costner is already making his tour of the room. So are director Roger Donaldson (The Bounty, Species, Dante's Peak), the film's producers, and other members of the cast, each doing their bit to talk up the film.
Now Greenwood and Nathanson have settled on their game plan. It's time for Greenwood to get out there. He shoots white cuffs out the sleeves of his blue suit. He's ready.
"All right," he says to Nathanson. "Point me in the right direction."
It's not as if he doesn't know how to work a room. I watch from the sidelines, standing under the massive Lichtenstein that dominates the caa lobby, as Greenwood moves from conversation to conversation. His leading-man looks aside -- just under six feet, sandy-blond hair, very blue eyes -- Greenwood projects an unaffected good humour. One thing you notice about people talking socially to him is that they are very frequently laughing. He tells funny stories. He is engaged and interested. In fact, he seems faintly presidential. When speaking with Nathanson, arms crossed, head canted forward to catch each word, the body language was pure Kennedy.
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(Clockwise from left) Greenwood as John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days, with special presidential adviser Kenny O'Donnell, played by Kevin Costner (right); with actor Steven Culp (left), who plays Kennedy's brother Robert; striking a presidential pose on the oval office set; at the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. |
If Greenwood's commercial and artistic reputations may be observed to coexist comfortably, so too do the polish and the casual. Back at his house, on a cliff overlooking the beach in a comfortable but not ostentatious suburb of Los Angeles -- Greenwood lives here with his wife, Susan, herself a native of Vancouver -- the actor looks more relaxed in sneakers, khakis, and a Billabong T-shirt. His house has hardwood floors and simple furnishings. There is a leather armchair. A fireplace. His dining-room table is stacked with movie scripts.
It seems that in his non-industry hours, there is little formality in the man. Even the suit he wore to the screening party tonight was costume, given to him by the Double Jeopardy wardrobe staff. (His character was evil but well-dressed.)
And there are things he'd rather do than submit to a grilling about his work in Hollywood. A long-time guitar player, he performs at blues gigs in local bars with his musician/actor friend Gregg Henry. He collaborates with the Vancouver children's music personality Norman Foote, even singing background vocals on some of Foote's recordings. He spends more time in his home recording studio than at Hollywood parties. He's heard I play piano and he wants to jam a couple of blues tunes instead. (Turns out Greenwood can turn a mean guitar lick. I stagger along behind his solo for a few twelve-bar sets, but my years in the Royal Conservatory did not prepare me for this.)
Below us the Pacific Coast Highway winds northward towards Canada, brilliant with head and tail lights. The sun is melting into the Pacific, a widening pool of pastel shades, the daily closing number for which California is rightly famous. "Isn't that beautiful?" Greenwood says, returning to our discussion about living in this part of the world. "I like this country."
Greenwood actually made the move to California twice. He originally picked up an interest in acting while studying arts at the University of British Columbia in the mid-1970s. And in 1977, he toured down to L.A. on his motorcycle thinking he just might start a career down there.
"I came down that same highway on my Yamy 500," Greenwood says, pointing down to the coastal highway below us. A kid with no reputation at all, commercial or art-house. No contacts, banking on charm. "I wangled my way into a Warner Brothers audition and there were a dozen guys in the waiting room. All good-looking. All blond." Greenwood peeled out afterwards, leaving a futile stack of five-by-tens behind him. He returned to Vancouver shortly thereafter.
The second L.A. coming, by contrast, clicked. It was 1983 and Greenwood had five more years of experience under his belt. This included study at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts, as well as acting experience in Vancouver's Arts Club Theatre, guest TV spots, a secondary role in the Donald Sutherland film Bear Island (1980), and a bit part in Sylvester Stallone's breakout film First Blood (1982), which was filmed in Hope, British Columbia. This time, on arrival in L.A., he quickly landed a leading role in the TV series Legmen, playing a college student who works for a private investigator doing car repossessions and other reliably dangerous errands. The show only lasted a year, but the press was good and Greenwood was noticed.
"I got lucky," says the ever self-deprecating Greenwood.
Perhaps, but he proceeded to pile up a stack of credits on such shows as The Hitchhiker, Danger Bay, Peyton Place, Matlock, and others. In 1986, Greenwood scored a spot on the acclaimed show St. Elsewhere, playing the libidinous, manipulative Dr. Seth Griffin. By TV standards, he had arrived.
"St. Elsewhere was a great experience," he says now. "The writing was very good." But his two years on the show also served as a launch pad of sorts. With his TV experience, Greenwood now targeted film. Not surprisingly, the quality of the early work is uneven. The Malibu Bikini Shop (1985) is probably not worth a rent unless you are a very serious Greenwood fan. But The Climb (1986) -- Greenwood plays a mountaineer facing emotional and physical peril in the Himalayas -- is a more subtle bit of acting business altogether. The film eventually won a Kodak International Award of Excellence in 1988. There followed a role in the turgid Mickey Rourke film Wild Orchid (1990), in which Greenwood plays the married American lawyer who deflowers Carré Otis, and a part as a young airline owner in the successful Wesley Snipes vehicle Passenger 57 (1992). These were roles that undoubtedly advanced Greenwood's commercial reputation, but did not highlight as effectively his artistic and dramatic range.
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(Clockwise from bottom left) Greenwood in Double Jeopardy with Ashley Judd; as character Thomas Veil in the television series Nowhere Man; with Mia Kirshner in Atom Egoyan's Exotica; playing the President's top adviser in Rules of Engagement; as the tortured small-town mechanic, Billy, in The Sweet Hereafter. |
The film that did this was Atom Egoyan's Exotica (1994), which came to Greenwood's attention via his agent in Canada, Debbie Peck. "This is one of those times when a good agent makes a difference," Greenwood tells me. " She said, 'I don't know how familiar you are with Egoyan, but you should think about this.' "
When you look at his work in Wild Orchid and Passenger 57, it is not immediately obvious that the same actor could pull off the Egoyan character, Francis. This is a man whose life has been shattered by the death of his daughter and his wife, and who develops an unhealthy obsession with a young stripper whose onstage persona is that of a schoolgirl. In this role, Greenwood plays a character who can be explained by no single obvious motive: his internal conflicts are great, his wounds are deep, and his fixations are nothing if not complex.
Still, from his first exposure to Greenwood -- whom Egoyan first saw in an audition the actor did for The Boys of St. Vincent -- the director was intrigued. It seemed that the creator of Francis saw something behind Greenwood's onscreen persona that was able to communicate complexity to an audience.
"I thought he had a remarkable presence," says Egoyan. "He can be someone who at once possesses Everyman, everyday qualities -- someone who is attractive and very identifiable as a leading man -- but who at the same time has this searing intelligence. I think both in person and onscreen he's incredibly curious and engaged, and he's able to convey that to the viewer."
It was Greenwood's best work to that date, and it earned him a Genie nomination. The performance is relentless, with Francis's pain coming off the screen in almost every scene. The role forced Greenwood to wear a mantle of what he calls "bone-weary sadness." Off-camera, this was difficult to shake. "My wife will tell you that I was down, muted. My normal joy of life was not there," Greenwood says. "It was a harsh little journey."
The role also involved trusting Egoyan. "I know there was always something about that part that Bruce felt that he wasn't getting," Egoyan tells me. "And yet he nailed the performance, beautifully."
Greenwood's success is underscored by the closing scene. In flashback, the film portrays Francis before the loss of his family. Since this is the only scene where Francis appears clean-shaven, it was shot last. The authenticity of Greenwood's performance is overwhelming. You recognize Francis from the tiniest physical parallels -- the way he shifts in his seat, the way he moves his mouth -- but his face has changed utterly. Shifting back in time, Greenwood has left the pain behind and the damaged Francis is gone. So complete, so physical, was this transformation, story has it, that a plastic surgeon who approached Greenwood at a party in Cannes refused to believe that the same actor had played both parts.
Greenwood returned to TV after Exotica -- ten projects in the next two years, including half a dozen TV movies, and regular roles in such series as Hardball, Nowhere Man, and The Larry Sanders Show. "I work because I like to work," he tells me. But in 1997, Egoyan again tapped Greenwood, this time for The Sweet Hereafter. Greenwood once again transformed himself, morphing into Billy, a small-town mechanic who is driving behind a school bus that's carrying his own children when it careers off the road, out onto a frozen lake, then plunges through the ice with its screaming, dying, passengers.
Greenwood's downtrodden character in Exotica helped him conjure up Billy's pain, and his experience working on coal rigs in northern Canada after his first failed move to L.A. helped him find Billy's rural, blue-collar sensibility. "I met half a dozen guys like him," he tells me.
"He owned that role," Egoyan agrees. "As soon as he walked on set, he inhabited this person."
As in Exotica, Greenwood took a little collateral damage playing the role. After some scenes -- particularly a cut scene in which Billy identifies the bodies of his drowned children -- Greenwood had to actively purge. "You just puke it out. You go have a couple of beers, play some pool. You remember that you're just an actor, pretending. You don't actually have to live with this the rest of your life like Billy would have."
The project was a huge critical success. Greenwood earned another Genie nomination and The Sweet Hereafter took dozens of prizes, including an Oscar nomination for best director. In these two Egoyan films, it might be argued, Greenwood had built a serious reputation for his dramatic abilities, and commercial Hollywood's interest was duly piqued. He did seven feature films in the next three years, one fewer than he had done in his career up to that point. Still, most of those characters did not drive the narrative. Greenwood was husband to Ashley Judd and then Darryl Hannah in Double Jeopardy and Hide and Seek, respectively. He was Leelee Sobieski's father in Here on Earth. He played a presidential adviser in Rules of Engagement.
Now -- just as Exotica was able to move him forward artistically -- Thirteen Days offers Greenwood a chance to move from the supporting positions and into the rare air of Hollywood's leading roles.
Greenwood and his wife were leaving on holiday to New York last year when he got the call about playing JFK. He ended up doing the first audition in New York with very little preparation. "I found recordings of Kennedy on the Internet and listened to them on my Walkman."
Still, both the producer and the director of Thirteen Days saw Greenwood in the role immediately. "When Bruce came in it was one of those cases of someone just being perfect and the search ending," says producer Peter Almond.
"Well they never told me that," Greenwood jokes. He remembers acquiring the character in stages. By the second audition, Greenwood had piled in more research hours watching Kennedy film footage and honing the physical performance. By the third -- more tapes, more films, and more books -- another Greenwood transformation was well underway.
Of course, transformation, however skilful, doesn't guarantee box office. Neither does the demanding press junket that began a short while ago, but it's an important part of promotions and Greenwood participates energetically, keeping up with his other projects while grinding out 150 TV, print, and radio interviews in the three days we spend together. The final day of the junket, Greenwood's work day actually starts at 8 a.m. in Burbank at a sound-studio session in connection with the cbs miniseries Haven. The series features Greenwood as a small-town American in the days after the Second World War, who must confront his own bigotry when the community hosts a group of Jewish refugees from Europe.
We drive out in Greenwood's Nissan 300 ZX, which he powers through the curves in Coldwater Canyon as he talks about the craft of playing Kennedy. The movie features large-scale action sequences involving U-2 spy planes, low-level flights over Cuba, and blockade confrontations between naval vessels and Russian freighters, but for the most part, it is a political character study, set against the Oval Office, the porticos, and the briefing rooms of an immaculately duplicated early 1960s White House.
"I thought of how
heavily a situation
like the Cuban
Missile crisis would
weigh on a man,"
Greenwood says.
"Not a great man,
like Kennedy was.
Just a man."To lend depth to his portrayal, Greenwood decided to set aside many common understandings of JFK -- his romances, his image as the king of Camelot -- and focus on the man trying to solve a seemingly intractable problem. "I thought of how heavily this would weigh on a man. Not a great man, as he was. Just a man." And in order to convey the mounting difficulty of the problem facing Kennedy, and communicate the agonizing consideration that Kennedy must have given to each move he made, Greenwood used a particular variant of the actor's "internal monologue."
"You try to hold in your head all the possible responses Kennedy might have had to a given question," he says. "Then, when a question is asked, you sort through these answers to arrive at the scripted one."
Greenwood also seeks to portray a Kennedy who would have been viewed only by those in the White House at that time. In one scene that illustrates this, Kennedy, his younger brother Robert, and adviser Kenny O'Donnell are hunkered down in a sitting room just off the Oval Office, tensely surveying the situation, when Greenwood decides to tap into a physical trait of Kennedy's that was carefully guarded from the public -- his chronic back pain. He steps over to the couch and his knee buckles ever so slightly before he recovers. He puts a hand on the small of his back and, after a brief pause, the conversation continues. It's a subtle bit of physical acting.
In total, it may be said that Greenwood immersed himself in images and sounds, continuing all through production to stamp Kennedy's vocal habits and physical ticks into his subconscious. He spent hours on the phone with co-star Steven Culp (who plays Robert Kennedy) refining their accents so they would each achieve an individual spin on the famous Kennedy Brahmin. "When I got tired of reading about him, I watched film. When I got tired of watching film, I'd listen to recordings," Greenwood says. According to Culp -- who was devoted enough to lose twenty-five pounds in pursuit of Robert Kennedy's body type -- "[Greenwood's] a maniac. He's more obsessive than I am."
In Burbank, I watch Greenwood do "looping" for the Haven project. Looping is a post-production process during which lines are re-dubbed onto an otherwise finished film. This is necessary where the production soundtrack has a flaw, or where the director feels the tone of delivery could be improved. Watching Greenwood do this reinforces my impression of his transformative powers. In looping, it's a trick for the actor to match his own lip movement perfectly, but Greenwood's more mesmerizing trick is to precisely locate the mood memory for a given snip of film with only seconds of preparation. In one case, where his character is trying to suppress tears at the news of his son's death, Greenwood watches the take, does a dry run, then nails the shuddering, raspy inhalation, followed by a falsely brave throat-clearing and nose sniff. Back in the car I ask him for the name of the character he was looping and he has to think for a minute before he can remember. Then he laughs: "Hey, if you carried all this shit around with you, you'd go insane."
Particularly when you're this busy. Since Haven, he's hardly been home. Right after the wrap, he received a call to appear in the remake of The Magnificent Ambersons, an Orson Welles-scripted Hollywood classic. Greenwood got the offer to play Eugene Morgan on a Monday. He read the script Tuesday, flew to London for two hours of wardrobe on Wednesday, and was in Ireland the next morning doing a read-through with the cast. He just got back a week ago.
Now it's junket time. At the Four Seasons, Nathanson is waiting. She is evidence herself of the steadily changing state of Greenwood's Hollywood reputation. He hired the publicist about a year ago as his promotional duties mounted. "I'm not used to being handled," he admits. But you can see it's a necessity. There are three other films being junketed in the hotel today at the same time as Thirteen Days: Columbia's action film Vertical Limit, the character-driven Sean Connery vehicle Finding Forrester, and Fox Searchlight is promoting Quills, starring Geoffrey Rush as the Marquis de Sade. Each junket takes up an entire floor of the hotel and the place is a zoo. Elevators are crammed with journalists and publicists, producers and employees of Junket Production Incorporated, who are stage-managing all of this.
For Thirteen Days, Greenwood, Costner, Donaldson, and Culp are all being shuttled around simultaneously to get in front of TV cameras and around tables with the print journalists. In Master Control, I get a top-down view of what's happening. Eight monitors cover the four interview rooms. Greenwood is positioned in front of a presidential set -- flag, podium, bookshelf. Donaldson, Culp, and Costner are backdropped by a war-room set, charts, etc. Every ten minutes or so, the interviews wrap, the stars sit back in their chairs and take a breath while the journalists rotate. Then they do it all over again.
"How did you get the role?"
"How did you feel about playing an American icon?"
"What
kind of research did you do?"
"What was it like working with Kevin Costner?" (Each reporter will learn that Costner on-set was collaborative and inspiring, not an unapproachable star.)Greenwood tweaks his answers to familiar questions, trying to stay fresh, stay excited. And in service of this -- especially when the questions veer towards the significance of the Kennedy presidency or the enormity of the crisis that faced him -- Greenwood's voice slows and deepens. He doesn't slip into accent, exactly, but the cadence, the care with the words -- these turn overtly presidential. Still, even Greenwood can't keep up the act when journalists seem to get confused.
Has he considered entering politics himself? After a pause, Greenwood answers: "We need great men, not good actors." And in response to a follow-up reference to Ronald Reagan, he deadpans: "I rest my case."
Five minutes later, another journalist freezes in the headlights and asks Greenwood what he thinks Kennedy would do about the recent U.S. electoral deadlock. Greenwood thinks for a second, then loses the presidential tone and says cheer- fully: "You know? I haven't a clue."
There is an impromptu gathering of the troops in the hallway after the interviews are finished -- Greenwood, Costner, Donaldson, Culp, and producer Armyan Bernstein -- the first time in a busy day they've actually been together as a group. Costner is quietly telling a few vaguely humorous stories. The rest of the guys are laughing, maybe a little too hard.
When they go their separate ways, Greenwood's day is still not over. He's off to another part of town for a read-through of a feature script, the producers of which are interested in him. Here -- in the bowels of a major studio that must remain nameless -- Greenwood sits at an enormous boardroom table with the cast, the director, the producers and executives associated with the project. It's a low-brow comedy, but Greenwood hangs in there, contributing the parts of several characters, gamely shifting verbal gears to imbue thin writing with some substance. Walking back to the car he says only: "Maybe I don't understand that kind of humour."
We've been at it for nearly twelve hours straight. Greenwood says he's tired but he doesn't really look it. Back through the Canyon again, our fourth crossing of the day. It's rush hour and an L.A. river of headlights pours past us. Greenwood sparks up a CD of songs written by his actor buddy Gregg Henry. Greenwood singing background vocals. They're mournful piano-bar songs. There's a little Tom Waits influence in there, some Randy Newman:
". . . caught in the crosshairs of aiming to please."
Thirteen Days opens in limited engagements in New York and Los Angeles on Christmas Day. On January 12 it opens across North America, following a strategy designed to avoid head-to-head competition from such sure season- sellers as the remake of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and build a little buzz in advance of wide release. But whatever the box office, it seems certain that Greenwood's Hollywood profile will rise.
After the caa screening, the applause was steady, not thunderous. It's possible the film is a shade too long at two hours and fifteen minutes. It's also possible that O'Donnell's role in the crisis -- and Costner's time onscreen -- have been bloated in the service of fiction. Still, out in the lobby later, I hear people talking about Oscar nominations. No one will go on the record with this, but the views being expressed about Greenwood are positive. "Well, first of all he is gorgeous," one woman tells me. "I also loved the film."
Greenwood won't speculate. Pre-release reaction to Double Jeopardy was tepid and it went on to become a hit. You can never tell. What he is very jazzed about at the moment is a different kind of project altogether. The latest news: Bruce Greenwood will again be working with Atom Egoyan.
Neither Egoyan nor Greenwood wants to talk a lot about the new project, but they volunteer a few things. It's called Ararat, like the mountain. It shoots next summer. It features a number of intertwining narrative lines and Greenwood plays, Egoyan tells me, "a genuinely heroic role. A role in which he needs to look at some aspects of what he does professionally. He's playing an actor playing a heroic character and going through issues during the shooting of a historic epic."
The character's working name in the script at the moment? Bruce.
There is an uncanny parallel to Greenwood's last work as the heroic JFK during the epic tensions of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but Egoyan tells me he did not plan this: "I had no idea as I was writing this that he was playing JFK."
Perhaps then it is merely emblematic of how the balance in Greenwood's career organically asserts itself. His highest-profile Hollywood role in the can, and more likely to come his way, Greenwood is in the enviable position of being able to segue back to the kind of role that first cemented his dramatic reputation. When Greenwood lets slip to Steven Culp (who also works in theatre) that he'll be working again with Egoyan, the reaction is immediate. "Oh you are?" Culp says, impressed. Then, sliding into Robert Kennedy, he quips: "Is there a part for me?"
When Thirteen Days finished shooting, Greenwood recorded a CD for his castmates and crew. It contains a blues rock number, the chorus of which climaxes with the line They're tearing down the White House, and I got the blues . . . for thirteen days.
He plays this CD for me in the car as we drive through Beverly Hills, palm trees flashing by on either side. Even if you didn't know the song was full of friendly in-jokes -- which it was -- you would guess it from Greenwood's broad smile. Thirteen Days in theatres and Ararat ahead, the blues are unlikely.
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HOW DO YOU PLAY JFK? The job of transforming Bruce Greenwood into John F. Kennedy fell primarily to Thirteen Days head costume designer Isis Mussenden. She and her staff conducted extensive research, combed "a gazillion" books and magazines, and examined old footage and stills with a magnifying glass in an effort to transform the Canadian actor into the American president. Here are some of Mussenden's key tricks. THE SUIT: "One thing about JFK's suits, they were a very unusual colour of blue - very presidential. Very much him. We made sure Bruce's suits were that colour, to separate him from the other actors." THE HAIR: "JFK had this amazing head of hair. Bruce's hairline was very different. We didn't have him wear a wig, but we added hairpieces to Bruce's own hair in order to get that block head of hair that JFK had." THE BUILD: "Kennedy was a lot bigger than Bruce, so when we were dressing Bruce, we needed to bulk him up and make him look a little squarer in physique. Kennedy wasn't huge, but he did have a very big head and a very square jaw. Bruce is slighter so we made the neck on his collar a little tighter and a little higher so that less neck would show and he would look stockier. We also built his shoulders up a little in the suits so that his physique would be stronger." THE HANKIE: "JFK had one really lovely touch that we wanted to make sure to include. He always had his hanky folded to form one simple, single triangular peak sticking out of his breast pocket. It's not that it's unusual, but it was completely consistent. We were researching this project last summer, right around the time when JFK, Jr., passed away, and when we were looking at pictures of JFK, Jr., we noticed that he did it too. It was incredibly touching, like a little silent homage to his dad." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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ACTING PRESIDENTIAL
Many actors, like Bruce Greenwood, have taken a stab at playing a US president (both real and fictional). Cast your vote for the best presidential portrayal form this editor-compiled short-list. Let's send a message (and a thespian) to the White House.
Email your vote to webmaster@saturdaynight.ca (Indicate "president" in your subject heading)
The Candidates Alan Alda - Canadian Bacon (1995)
Low in the polls, the pres (Alda) needs a war to fight. So he decides to invade Canada.
Lloyd Bridges - Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993)
President Thomas "Tug" Benson recruits Charlie Sheen for a rescue mission in Iraq.
Michael Douglas - The American President (1995)
The president goes on dates.
Henry Fonda - Fail-Safe (1964)
US bombers are mistakenly send to destroy Moscow. Computer malfunction is to blame. Politicians and generals squirm.
Harrison Ford - Air Force One (1997)
James "Jim" Marshall (Ford) kicks terrorist butt in this classic retelling of man vs. man, in an airplane.
Jack Lemon, James Garner and Dan Aykroyd - My Fellow Americans (1996)
Kramer (Lemmon) and Douglas (Garner), former presidents and political opposites join forces when their reputaitions come under fire from the President Haney (Aykroyd).
Bruce Greenwood - 13 Days (2001)
Greenwood is JFK at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Gene Hackman - Absolute Power (1997)
Hackman plays a president who believes he's above the law.
Anthony Hopkins - Nixon (1995)
Anthony Hopkins and Oliver Stone's dark portryal of Nixon's fall from power.
Kevin Klein - Dave (1993)
The president needs someone to impersonate him after suffering a stroke during sex. Dave does the job.
E. G. Marshall - Superman 2 (1980)
Battle for world supremacy, Superman wins.
Ernie Myers - Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978)
Ernie plays the president as many people run from giant tomatoes.
Jack Nicholson - Mars Attacks! (1996)
President Dale tries his hand at foreign diplomacy with blood-hungry aliens.
Donald Pleasants - Escape from New York (1981)
The president is being held hostage in futuristic Manhattan, now a maximum security prison. Former war hero and felon, Snake Plissken tries to save him.
Jeff Bridges - The Contender (2000)
President Jackson Evans wants to elect the first female vise-president, but his appointee's past has many sexy skeletons.
Bill Pullman - Independence Day (1996)
Pullman plays president Thomas J. Whitmore and rallies what's left of his country to fight an onslaught of aliens.
Peter Sellers - Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
President Merkin Muffley attempts to placate a drunken Soviet premier and save the world from a demented Air Force General.
John Travolta - Primary Colors (1998)
Travolta is not portraying Bill Clinton, he's Governor Jack Stanton, and he's running for president. Seriously.
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