The 10 most memorable U.S. presidents in film

The U.S. presidency is one of cinema’s more enduring subjects for drama—and comedy, too, for that matter. Presidents both real and fictitious have inspired reverence and ridicule in movies, which mirrors how Americans tend to view the office. And like politics itself, perceptions can be fluid. Take, for example, 1933’s Gabriel Over the White House, in which  Walter Huston played a proudly fascist president whom the film presents, with disturbing sincerity, as exactly what the country needed.

What follows is my take on the 10 most memorable movie presidents, but with a caveat: this list does not include the curious case of Ronald Reagan, the nation’s 40th commander in chief whose acting career in Hollywood spanned more than 50 movies and titles ranging from Knute Rockne, All American to Bedtime for Bonzo. 

10. George W. Bush in W. (2008, dir. Oliver Stone)

No one would accuse Oliver Stone of lacking a strong point of view. The filmmaker who put Richard Nixon on the couch (see #3 below) is even less charitable to the protagonist of W., his withering satire of the George W. Bush presidency. Josh Brolin, who stepped in after Christian Bale bowed out, masters Dubya’s Lone Star swagger and malapropisms, but the portrayal is more than caricature. Dubya is a trust-fund baby and party boy, sure, but W. allows him vulnerabilities, namely his unending need for parental affirmation from Poppy Bush (James Cromwell). W. has the scope of a standard biopic, chronicling the nation’s 43rd president from his college days at Yale through the 2003 Iraq War, but this is no history lesson. Stone and writer Stanley Weiser are after agitprop comedy as big and broad as Bush’s beloved Texas.

9. Donald Trump in The Apprentice (2024, dir. Ali Abbasi)

A fictionalized account of Donald Trump’s business ascent under the tutelage of notorious fixer Roy Cohn, The Apprentice made it to the big screen despite threatened litigation from its real-life subject. We begin in the mid-1970s with the fabled introduction between Cohn (Jeremy Strong) and 20-something Donald (Sebastian Stan), who is blazing his own path in real estate after living in his father’s shadow. There are hints that Cohn, who kept his homosexuality closeted, is attracted to Donald. For his part, Donald is drawn to Cohn’s bravado, finding a surrogate father who, if not exactly nurturing, is eager to dispense Machiavellian wisdom. Cohn tells his protégé three rules for life—lessons that metastasized years later on the considerably larger stage of the presidency: “Attack, attack, attack”; “admit nothing, deny everything”; and “never admit defeat.” Stan does a fine job inhabiting one of the most familiar people on the planet, giving Trump a faintly wounded demeanor. Strong’ s uncanny transformation even manages to wring a bit of sympathy for one of history’s least sympathetic figures.

8. Abraham Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939, dir. John Ford)

It’s a shame Henry Fonda never ran for president, given how convincingly he later played the commander in chief (see #4). In Young Mr. Lincoln, Fonda plays the future 16th president circa 1832, back when Abe was just a jackleg country lawyer, in the parlance of the movie. Fonda initially resisted the part, telling 20th Century Fox execs it was too daunting a role. Thankfully, director John Ford persuaded him with the help of some salty language. Fonda’s Lincoln is gawky and tentative, but also disarmingly self-effacing and quick with a quip—though the murder trial at the film’s center is really window-dressing. Beautifully photographed by Bert Glennon, Young Mr. Lincoln exudes the comfort of a quiet whisper and a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. 

7. John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days (2000, dir. Roger Donaldson)

Detailing the October 1962 crisis when the Soviet Union placed some 40 ballistic missiles in Cuba, Thirteen Days is not a great film—but it is a very good one. Roger Donaldson’s directing choices are rote, Trevor Jones’ music score is smothering, and Kevin Costner, who stars as a key advisor to President John F. Kennedy, affects a wretchedly fake Boston accent. But the Cuban Missile Crisis remains too riveting to derail. As Kennedy, steering the U.S. back from the brink of nuclear war, Bruce Greenwood gives a subtle, nicely understated performance. The military establishment scoffs at the president as soft on Russian aggression, but time and again JFK weighs the most prudent course of action. “There’s something immoral about abandoning your own judgment,” he says. There is fine supporting work from Steven Culp as Robert Kennedy, Dylan Baker as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Kevin Conway as Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, among others. What ultimately emerges is a president who is neither hawk nor dove, but a levelheaded pragmatist determined to avoid World War III without rolling over on the Soviets.

6. Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon (2008, dir. Ron Howard)

When Richard Nixon sought to repair his reputation with television interviews in 1977, his aides selected an interviewer they were certain would be a pushover. British TV host David Frost was more accustomed to interviewing the Bee Gees than world leaders. By all rights, it should not have been a fair fight, and yet it became one. Michael Sheen and Frank Langella are, respectively, the TV personality and the president. Nixon overwhelms Frost in the first three sessions with stonewalling and long-winded digressions. The battle comes down to the final Watergate interview. Can Frost coax Nixon into a confession on the scandal that destroyed his presidency? While history knows the answer, it is a testament to the artistry of director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan that Frost/Nixon crackles with suspense. Langella captures Nixon’s mannerisms, but the performance is interpretation and not imitation, presenting a president who is, at once, cornered, combative and unexpectedly human. He imbues Nixon with a sympathy that eluded the real man.

5. Dave Kovic in Dave (1993, dir. Ivan Reitman)

Director Ivan Reitman and screenwriter Gary Ross update the Frank Capra recipe for what could just as easily have been titled Mr. Dave Goes to Washington. Kevin Kline is the titular hero, an amiable, aw-shucks fellow who runs a small-town temp agency but moonlights impersonating U.S. President Bill Mitchell (also Kline). Demand for a presidential double suddenly spikes when Mitchell has a massive stroke while schtupping his secretary (Laura Linney) and slips into a coma. Diabolical White House chief of staff Bob Alexander (Frank Langella) snags Dave to play the incapacitated president while keeping the country in the dark. Even the first lady (Sigourney Weaver), who detests her husband’s philandering and political gamesmanship, is won over by the president’s new-found niceness, but a commander in chief with an actual conscience isn’t what Alexander had in mind. Like Dave the lookalike, Dave the movie is irresistible. Breezy and charming, this political fairytale is hard to predict and easy to love.

4. The President in Fail-Safe (1964, dir. Sidney Lumet)

This Cold War nail-biter is as bleak as the nuclear holocaust envisioned in Fail-Safe. There is one bright light: Henry Fonda gets to be the president of the United States. A lone U.S. bomber advances toward Russia for a nuclear attack—the result of a catastrophic computer glitch—and Fonda’s president must be candid with the Russian premier. Dr. Strangelove plays the same scene for laughs (see #2), but not Fail-Safe. In a windowless room, the President and a young translator (Larry Hagman, a year before his TV fame on I Dream of Jeannie) begin a fragile line of communication with the Soviet premier. The world leaders tentatively inch toward mutual trust while the clock ticks. “If we don’t trust each other now, Mr. Chairman, there may not be another time,” says the president, who is soon faced with horrifying choices that underscore the tragic reality of the office. It’s a performance of such grave authority that you truly believe every unthinkable decision he must make. 

3. Richard Nixon in Nixon (1995, dir. Oliver Stone) 

The Sturm und Drang of Richard Milhous Nixon’s political rise and fall is ripe for psychoanalysis. Oliver Stone certainly thought so. His biopic Nixon puts the nation’s embattled 37th president on the couch for a full vetting of the man’s insecurities, fears and abandonment issues. Whether Nixon is an accurate or even fair portrait is an open question. Anthony Hopkins plays Nixon as a complicated, deeply flawed man. He is at turns conniving, paranoid, resentful and delusional, but one for whom Stone and his star have empathy. The supporting cast—including Joan Allen as Pat Nixon, Paul Sorvino as Henry Kissinger, James Woods as Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman, and David Hyde Pierce as White House counsel John Dean—is magnificently over-the-top. This arch melodrama is matched by Stone’s onslaught of flashbacks, montages, Dutch angles, and a mix of grainy black-and-white footage with washed-out color. The overall effect is occasionally shrill, but Stone’s showmanship is on full, glorious display.  

2. Merkin Muffley in Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, dir. Stanley Kubrick)

While Peter Sellers has three roles in this Cold War comedy classic, few scenes in movie history rival his brilliant turn as the U.S. president. Drawing inspiration for the character’s look from failed presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, Sellers largely improvised the pivotal phone call where the president explains to a drunk Soviet premier how a deranged Air Force captain has ordered a nuclear strike on Russia. First, however, the president must get the niceties out of the way. “I can hear you now, Dimitri, plain and clear and coming through fine,” he says cheerfully. “I’m coming through fine, too, eh? Good, well then, as you say, we’re both coming through fine.” The conversation is a masterclass in comedy, and in keeping with Dr. Strangelove’s persistent linkage of sex with annihilation. After all, writer-director Stanley Kubrick and co-writer Terry Southern named the beleaguered commander-in-chief Merkin Muffley, both referencing, ahem, female genitalia. (See more in The 10 best black comedies.)

1. Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln (2012, dir. Steven Spielberg)

The film comes with a towering pedigree: director Steven Spielberg, actor Daniel Day-Lewis and a screenplay by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner. Lincoln follows the last few months of the president’s life, when he fought to pass the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery before the Civil War drew to a close. Lincoln is most compelling when it frames him as a cagey political strategist, maneuvering through competing factions of congressional Republicans—especially the radical abolitionists led by Senator Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones)—and dealmaking with Democrats willing to sell their vote for a plum job. He deploys folksy humor or engages in horse-trading, depending on his target audience. Day-Lewis, who spent a year preparing for the part, rightly won his third Oscar for the performance. The enormous cast—which also includes Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as their eldest son and David Strathairn as Secretary of State William Seward—are uniformly excellent. But it is Day-Lewis who fully disappears into the role. His reedy voice and distinctive gait help move Lincoln away from the realm of marble statues. 

Honorable mention: James Marshall in Air ForceOne (1997, dir. Wolfgang Petersen), Andrew Shepherd in The American President (1995, dir. Rob Reiner), John Quincy Adams in Amistad (1997, dir. Steven Spielberg), Judson Hammond in Gabriel Over the White House (1933, dir. Gregory La Cava), Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho in Idiocracy (2006, dir. Mike Judge), Dwight D. Eisenhower in Lee Daniels’The Butler (2013, dir. Lee Daniels), Richard Nixon in Secret Honor (1984, dir. Robert Altman), Jordan Lyman in Seven Days in May (1964, dir. John Frankenheimer), Barack Obama in Southside With You (2016, dir. Richard Tanne), Franklin D. Roosevelt in Warm Springs (2005, dir. Joseph Sargent)