I want to like this movie, but I cannot get past Hopkins trying to be Nixon. Nixon was a big man, a presence. Whereas Hopkins is a smaller man, and really doesn't look anything resembling nixon, in face or height or stature. The hair isn't even right.
I had a similar initial reaction, but after I got used to it I rather liked Hopkins as Nixon.
shareDid Hopkins ever play an American besides this movie? I thought his role as Nixon was fascinating, but made him even more jittery and paranoid than Nixon really was. Nixon was not a charmer and a geek more than anything else.
shareAfter Nixon lost the gubernatorial election in California, he was convinced there was someone in the back seat of his car, even though there wasn't. Were it not for the self-medication with alcohol, he might have become full-blown paranoid psychotic.
Yes, he really was that paranoid.
It's one thing to see him (in this film) as as sympathetic character. It's another to kid oneself that he wasn't clearly self-loathing, paranoid, and as result malicious all out of proportion to his imagined slights.
hopkins was the reason behind my hesitation to check this film out at first. i know hopkins is good at everything he does, but the casting bothered me too...yet, in time, he really grew on me. i found myself virtually relating him to the images and clips i've seen of the real dick nixon.
i suppose hopkins was cast exactly for that reason, nailing all the mannerisms, because if oliver stone wanted to prioritize looks, beau bridges with a prosthetic nose would likely be more convincing than hopkins OR langella, but doubtfully would have put in such a stellar performance overall.
anthony hopkins didn't look like nixon, but there's no denying, he FELT like nixon.
---------------
"say jim! whooo! that's a bad outFIT!" ~ superman (1978)
Me too. He pulled it off spectacular and still am angry he didnt win the Oscar.
shareIt certainly wasn't the best casting of Nixon. I just saw this on cable the other day and I couldn't help but think that Hopkins wasn't the best choice for the role. Beau Bridges does a better job in "Kissinger and Nixon", a made for TV film that came out about the same time as "Nixon".
shareFrank Langella was a brilliant choice in Frost/Nixon, but he may have been too young at the time Nixon was made.
shareI agree, though I do like this movie. Hopkins was a poor bit of casting.
shareI didn't mind Hopkins for the role, though I have seen others who were better. Lane Smith in "The Final Days" a TV movie from the late 80s comes to mind.
shareIt is easy to laugh at Anthony Hopkins' casting. Since he played Hannibal Lecter in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, I joked that he ate Senator George McGovern's liver with a nice bottle of Chianti. He does not have the physical resemblance that other actors who have played him, such as Lane Smith, did but he captured his tragic nature.
shareIt's an incredible performance. He is Welsh and doesn't look like him at all really.
Yet by the end I almost thought he was Nixon.
Brilliant casting.
Dan Heyada played Nixon in a comedic role 4 years later in Dick (he was in this film too). I'm not sure about his star presence but he was solid in that role. He's done serious stuff as well- did the Hurricane and played a corrupt cop in that one. I think he'd have pulled off a serious Nixon portrayal admirably.
shareNixon was not "a big man, a presence". He might have been that had he "charisma". What he was, instead, was small, petty, vindictive, and at times on the brink of full-blown paranoid psychosis.
What Hopkins does is "get" Nixon's body language -- that strange "hunkered-down" look, with his head sunk between his shoulders.
You can tell Stone's political leanings by the casting. He used "Hannibal the Cannibal" to play Nixon, LOL Could this film be biased?
shareYou can tell Stone's political leanings by the casting. He used "Hannibal the Cannibal" to play Nixon, LOL Could this film be biased?
I think Hopkins was fine as Nixon, but Dan Hedaya, who plays Trini Cardoza in this film, physically resembles him. Hedaya played Nixon in the 1999 film "Dick."
share