Fred Thompson's charmed life

WASHINGTON — Fred Thompson never took an acting class, performed in summer stock or dreamed of Hollywood fame. But a big-name director, preparing a film about political corruption exposed by Thompson, asked him to play himself in the movie.

A star was born. Thompson, then a lawyer, went on to make 23 movies, countless television programs and millions of dollars.

The accidental actor now is being urged to take another role, as a growing crowd of conservatives clamors for him to run for the Republican nomination for president.

Other candidates have been refining their game plans for years, but the former Tennessee senator seemingly has glided almost without effort to a strong position in early polls, even though most voters know him only as a district attorney on television's "Law & Order."

If Thompson answers the call, a big question will come with him: Will voters see a real-life leader or someone who only plays one on the screen?

As a candidate, Thompson would bring a compelling personal saga: He grew up in a small town, married at 17, did a star turn in the Senate's Watergate hearings, dated splashy, younger women after his divorce, won a Senate seat and then left it amid the pain of a daughter's death. At 64, he finds himself the remarried father of an infant and a toddler.

Some associates doubt Thompson has the driving ambition needed to run for president. He became a Senate committee chairman by a fluke, not by a laborious climb up the seniority ladder. His acting career began spontaneously, and he has not chosen roles that expand his range or test his skills.

"Fred is generally playing a version of himself," said producer Mace Neufeld, who has worked with Thompson on five films. "I wouldn't cast him as a Frenchman or a villain."

Thompson has acknowledged the large role of happenstance in his successes. "I have never beaten down a lot of doors in my life, but occasionally doors have opened to me, and I had sense enough to see that they were opening and I would walk through them," he said recently in a Fox News interview. "And they've always turned out well for me."

The door may be opening again, largely because many conservatives are unhappy with their current choices for president. Thompson, as a senator, posted a solidly conservative voting record on abortion, gun control and other litmus-test policies.

Yet, he did not lead the charge on those issues. He backed a campaign-finance overhaul bill that is loathed by conservatives. Unlike President Reagan, the actor-turned-politician idolized by Republicans, Thompson does not have a well-articulated ideology or signature set of ideas.

His most obvious qualification may be that Thompson — 6-foot-6, with a booming voice, Southern drawl and stage presence — looks and sounds the part. Indeed, he will portray a U.S. president, Ulysses Grant, in an upcoming HBO movie.

"He comes straight out of central casting," said Rep. Jerry Weller, R-Ill. "First impressions matter in politics."

The son of a used-car salesman, he grew up in Lawrenceburg, Tenn., a town of about 10,000 that describes itself as a "modern Mayberry." He married his high-school girlfriend, had a baby shortly afterward and two more in quick succession. He earned a bachelor's degree from Memphis State University and a law degree at Vanderbilt University. He returned to Lawrenceburg to practice law.

"For a decade, my greatest desire and highest ambition was to be a big legal fish in the small pond of Lawrenceburg," he said in a 2006 speech to the American Bakers Association.

After a stint as assistant U.S. attorney in Nashville, Tenn., he made his most fateful political connection in 1972, meeting Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn., and signing up for his re-election campaign.

When Baker became the senior Republican on the Senate committee investigating the Watergate scandal, he asked Thompson to be his top aide.

Thompson helped question witnesses in the televised hearings that riveted the nation. Most famously, he asked a question of White House aide Alexander Butterfield that prompted disclosure of President Nixon's Oval Office audiotapes, a bombshell that set Nixon further on the path toward his departure from office.

But in a bit of political stagecraft, Thompson told the White House counsel of the coming disclosure before Butterfield's testimony, according to Thompson's memoir.

He spent many years after Watergate in lobbying and law firms. From there, he moved between acting and politics.

His acting career began in the mid-1980s, when a filmmaker asked Thompson to play himself in "Marie," a movie about a whistle-blower Thompson had represented in a 1977 political-corruption case. "Here I was, never so much as having been in a high-school play or had an acting lesson — which I am often told is obvious — going head-to-head with Sissy Spacek and Morgan Freeman," Thompson recalled.

That role launched him into a series of films, always playing a blunt, charismatic authority figure with a soothing Southern drawl.

Thompson played a White House chief of staff in "In the Line of Fire," CIA director in "No Way Out," and president in "Last Best Chance."

After playing a senator in the 1993 film "Born Yesterday," he decided to run for a Senate seat in a 1994 special election. He easily won and added a full, six-year term two years later.

He lucked into a committee chairmanship after three years, a plum most senators labor for decades to acquire. Thompson chaired the Government Affairs Committee during a high-profile investigation of fundraising improprieties by the Clinton administration, but some Republicans were disappointed that the investigation did not turn up a smoking gun.

Thompson did not make his mark with big legislative initiatives. "It never occurred to us he would bring much more than his one vote," one senior GOP Senate strategist said.

Associates said endless meetings and slow-moving procedures flustered Thompson.

"One got the impression that he wasn't excited about being a United States senator," said G. William Hoagland, a former Senate aide.

Thompson considered quitting rather than seeking another term in 2002. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, he said he would run for re-election.

He reversed his decision soon after his adult daughter died of an unintentional drug overdose, according to newspaper accounts.

Even before he left the Senate, he was offered a spot on "Law & Order," on which he plays Arthur Branch, a New York district attorney. He also started anew in his personal life.

Divorced in 1985, he had entered a long period of highly publicized bachelorhood, dating the likes of country-music singer Lorrie Morgan. But at 59, he remarried and now has two young children.

Information in this article, originally published May 6, 2007, was corrected May 9, 2007. A previous version of this story gave an incorrect release date for the movie "No Way Out." The film was released in 1987, not 1997.