In his 35 years in movies, some of Dennis Quaid’s most memorable portrayals have been of real-life characters. Jerry Lee Lewis, Doc Holliday, Sam Houston, astronaut Gordon Cooper … but the idea of playing former President Bill Clinton still scared him.
He readily admits he had no idea why the producers of The Special Relationship, which tells the story of how Clinton worked with newly elected British Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), wanted him in the role. He didn’t see a resemblance, and found the idea of playing someone who’s been imitated by every two-bit comedian around rather daunting. But it was that fear, and the importance of the story, that motivated him to take on the project.
It might have helped that, despite playing one of the modern history’s most recognizable figures, his Clinton is not the main character. The story is told mostly from Blair’s perspective, and could be considered the third part of a trilogy of Blair stories written by Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon) and starring Sheen, who also played the role in 2003’s The Deal and 2006’s Oscar-winner The Queen.
The Special Relationship takes its title from the Winston Churchill-coined term describing the mutual benefits of strong U.S.-British ties, and plays on Blair’s long-held admiration for Clinton. That’s all tested, however, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal threatens Clinton’s presidency, and he goes into self-preservation mode while Blair pushes for American involvement in the Kosovo war. It premieres May 29 on HBO.
Quaid talked with me about the physical and emotional transformations required to play Clinton, and how learning more about the Lewinsky affair actually improved his opinion of the man.
When they approached you about playing Clinton, were you excited, or worried that it would come off as an impression?
Dennis Quaid: That was one of my main concerns, because I could do the voice a bit. When you’re doing something like this, you don’t want it to be a Saturday Night Live impersonation of somebody. You want to get into their skin and really portray them from their point of view and capture their spirit. It was a daunting task. I really didn’t see why on Earth they would even consider me to play him. I really don’t look like him, I think. … I went in to see Peter Morgan and talked with him a bit, and then lo and behold a couple months later they want me to do it. I was really shocked. But I have this philosophy that I follow sometimes that the thing you’re most afraid to do you should do. I was really afraid I would suck. That was really the fear, fear of sucking.
Did you do much research about Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal, or did you just go from the script?
I read his autobiography, which is huge. He loves to talk. It was almost a day-by-day of eight years in the White House, which helped me immensely as far as research of the character of him. I say “the character” because it’s a character in our story. And then I had my own personal experience with him back in the ’90s. This would be post-Lewinsky, I think it was 1999. I spent a weekend in the White House with him, just he and I, which was really cool. I saw him several times subsequently and kind of got to know him in a way, his mannerisms, the way he is around people, how really brilliant he is. He’s the smartest man I’ve ever met.
How did you approach him as a character?
I tried to really get into all aspects of him. He’s a multifaceted guy. What it boils down to with him, he has a desire to be liked by people. That has a lot to do with what drives him. He has a lot of compassion for people. As a person, that translated into politics, because I think he really did want to help people and help the country. … You can see that in his politics, how after 1994, they came up with that concept of triangulation, of moving toward the center, and really learning how to govern. He really grew as a president, I think.
I notice he’s often eating in the film, usually munching on chips. Was that scripted or something you added to the character?
Probably a little bit of both. Being around him, that’s kind of the way he was. He has a voracious appetite. There’s a little bit of Arkansas country boy in him as well as an intellectual giant.
You had to gain weight to play him, right?
I put on 30 pounds to play him. I had four months to do it, so I did probably what he did. I went to McDonald’s, did my own Super Size Me kind of thing. I would eat six meals a day.
What else, physically, went into playing Clinton?
The hair. It was such a big part of it, the hair. It sounds really trivial, but it was. I wore a wig, because there’s no way to get that hair. We tried a little nose thing on the tip, to make it a little bulbous. But in the end it didn’t work, because it sort of hid me. It looked like I was trying too hard. Then I shaved my eyebrows. Clinton barely has any eyebrows. Putting the weight in the face and in the body, you walk differently, you feel differently. Then I watched miles and miles of footage on him. There’s so much available, and to put as many of his mannerisms in, try to get Dennis’ mannerisms out, that’s the big thing with playing somebody who’s so well-known. Getting the voice to a place that was not an impersonation or a caricature. It was important to get all those things mechanically and then get them to the point where you could just forget them and just concentrate on playing the scene without having to think about all the rest of it.
Since you had known him a little before, did you think about trying to contact him when this came up?
I didn’t try to contact him before doing this. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in about six years. I just thought it was kind of better to not contact him. Just about any of us would not want certain parts of our lives to be made into a movie. I tried to be sensitive to that.
Peter Morgan and Michael Sheen had worked together before on Blair movies. How did you find fitting in to their world?
It was a really great script to begin with. With Peter Morgan involved, that was one of the reasons I really decided to do it. He doesn’t really write with a political agenda. He portrays these giant figures in our life in a very human way, and I think that’s what makes it interesting. He boils them down to their simple little human emotions.
That’s something you hear about a lot of movies about political figures, that they’re not political. How does “The Special Relationship” avoid having an agenda?
It just holds a mirror up to them, and to the events. Whoever’s watching it, of course, is going to filter that through their own opinions of the people, but it really comes down to just portraying the person.
Hope Davis was very well-cast as Hillary Clinton. What was working with her like?
She was fantastic. She came on the project late — we’d been shooting for a couple weeks — and she went into the makeup trailer and came out, and she was Hillary. It was uncanny, the way she got her. She’s just a fantastic actress, so easy to work with. I know she made me better.
The Monica Lewinsky scandal is such a huge chapter in U.S. politics. Did you get a new perspective on it doing this?
To tell you the truth, my respect for Clinton grew even more. It’s amazing, if you put yourself into the situation that he had gotten himself into, and then to overcome that not only in his personal relationship with Hillary — I do believe that they really love each other. You cannot deny that is a strong relationship, in the end — then this huge mountain, anyone else would have been out of office, would have succumbed to it. He still had the ability to run the country and he could compartmentalize his brain to what was going on. He could deal with this personal issue that had become a national issue, and also deal with all the politics and world events and crises that came along at the same time, and get through that, get through impeachment, and go on to not only just stay in office but to actually get a lot done in his last years as president.
The scenes between Clinton and Blair, were those wholly created by Peter Morgan, or did he base them on something?
I don’t want to speculate, but who’s to really know what went on behind closed doors in the total conversation? We do know little snippets of things. Clinton, in his book, describes that scene where he told Hillary what was going on [about Lewinsky], but I’m sure a lot of things are just kept personal. What people are fascinated by in Peter Morgan’s work is all those scenes after this big event, after all those things that we saw on television, when they leave the room and go behind closed doors. After the doors shut, that’s what everybody wants to see.
What’s next for you?
I think I’m kind of busy. I’m really having more fun in my career than I’ve ever had, to tell you the truth. I enjoy it more now than I did in my 20s and 30s, because I’m not trying to prove anything, and I’m doing what I enjoy. I just came back from Hawaii. I was there for two months, it was actually my first island paradise location. I did a movie called Soul Surfer. You know, the Bethany Hamilton story? [The young surfer who lost an arm during a shark attack.] I played the dad, and [the Hamiltons] were on the set. I learned to surf, which has now become a new love in my life.
