For James Cromwell, working with pigs and sheep should be great prep for a movie set in the world of presidential politics.
Oliver Stone’s George W. Bush biopic continues to add cast members, with Variety announcing that the director has cast James Cromwell as his father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush and Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush.
Well, all this has been proving that if nothing else, Stone can still attract a prestiigious cast. Burstyn is one of our classiest and most versatile actresses, and James Cromwell has had a great career in a number of memorable character roles. He’s been around forever (I remember him from movies in the mid-70s), but really made his name playing the stoic but gentle sheep farmer in Babe. He turned all that nicety nicety around, though, in LA Confidential, where he scored big as a corrupt police commissioner, and since then has pretty much had his pick of whatever parts he wants. This isn’t his first head of state, btw–he played Prince Philip to Helen Mirren’s Queen Elizabeth in The Queen (okay, he’s not exactly a head of state, but it’s close).
Stone is planning to shoot at the end of April, with an eye towards getting the film out in theaters between November and January. In other words, before George W rides off into the sunset.
