Actors - Nixon

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Nixon is a 1995 film which tells the story of the political and personal life of former President Richard Nixon. It stars Anthony Hopkins as Nixon, Joan Allen (Pat Nixon), Powers Boothe (Alexander Haig), Ed Harris (E. Howard Hunt), Bob Hoskins (J. Edgar Hoover), E.G. Marshall (John N. Mitchell), David Paymer (Ron Ziegler), David Hyde Pierce (John Dean), Paul Sorvino (Henry Kissinger), Mary Steenburgen (Nixon's mother), J.T. Walsh (John Ehrlichman), James Woods (H. R. Haldeman), and lots of cameo appearances from many notable actors.

The movie was written by Stephen J. Rivele, Christopher Wilkinson and Oliver Stone. It was directed by Stone.

Confounding the expectations of some critics who expected the movie to be a "hatchet job," it actually portrays Nixon as a complex and in many respects admirable character, though deeply flawed. Stone's only ideological polemic in the film is to attempt to vaguely link Nixon to the perpetrators of the assassination of John F. Kennedy by his association with ultra-right wing business leaders, anti-Castro Cubans, and Nixon's visit to Dallas in November of 1963 (coinciding with Kennedy's own, ill-fated arrival at Dallas's Love Field) and through his Eisenhower-era involvement with the creation of Castro assassination squads, who he later speculates were involved with the JFK assassination, and some of whom are linked to Watergate.

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The film covers all aspects of Nixon's life in order to get a better psychological portrait of both the man and the president; however, the film is not to be taken as literal history "as it happened," but rather as a pastiche and composite of actual events. It depicts his childhood in Whittier, California as well as his growth as a young man, football fan/player, and suitor to his eventual wife, Pat Nixon. It fully explores most of the important achievements of his presidency, including his downfall due to abuse of executive power in the White House. Most of the major and minor figures who helped propel Nixon to the Presidency are represented as well as those who played important roles within his administration.

The film is a non-chronological narrative and is typical of Oliver Stone's visual style and cinematic approach to history, using a variety of film stocks and video techniques to give a sense of time, place, psychology and mood. The film's opening sequence offers a visual/aural homage to Orson Welles' Citizen Kane
and invokes the overall mood of Shakespearean tragedy. The cinematic style is considered to be "operatic," meaning that the figure of Nixon is writ larger than life across the screen and all aspects of the incidents that make up his life are explored with a heightened sense of style in order to create psychological suture and draw the viewer in for a better understanding of why Nixon acted as he did. The film is not nearly as judgemental as Stone's prior work (notably his 60's Trilogy of: Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July
, and Heaven & Earth, as well as his highly controversial work JFK. His film The Doors is also oriented toward his own experiences in the 1960's but leaves out arguments against America's involvement in the Vietnam War).

Both Hopkins and Stone decided not to use of prosthetic makeup in creating the iconographic figure of Richard Nixon (test makeup for Nixon actually appears in some quickly edited clips during the film, and looks almost odd in comparison). Intrestingly the real Nixon also tended to not use stage make up and this fact is often sited as one of the main reasons he lost the 1960 presidential election. His characteristic sloped nose and heavy jowls are gone, but the stiff shoulders, slicked back hair, and tense, nervous grin are all portrayed. Nixon's alcohol dependency (heavy social drinking was the norm during those times), as well as that of his wife, is fully implied here as is the pill addiction he faced during his remaining years in office (Nixon's health problems, including his bout of phlebitis and pneumonia during the Watergate crisis are also shown in the film, and his pill use is sometimes attributed to those health issues).

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Actors - Nixon

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