Bigger Than Life

Fred Thompson in his high school football uniform.

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After Nixon resigned in 1974, Thompson moved back to Nashville and started a lucrative private law practice. In 1977, he was hired by Marie Ragghianti, who had been fired after blowing the whistle on corruption in the Tennessee parole system, to represent her in a lawsuit against Gov. Ray Blanton. She recalls Thompson's effect on her antagonists: "When I walked in with Fred, they were visibly intimidated. I never felt so secure in my life."

Peter Maas wrote a book, "Marie," about her case. When director Roger Donaldson decided to make the story into a movie, he asked Thompson if he'd audition for a part.

"I assumed it would be maybe a one-word walk-on or something like that," Thompson says. When he saw the script, he couldn't believe his eyes: The part he was reading for was "Fred Thompson."

He got the job. There was one catch, a producer told him: They needed to figure out the financial arrangement.

"How does $25,000 sound?" the producer asked.

"Well, it sounds okay, but it will take me a little while to raise the money," Thompson joked.

When the movie came out, it said right there in the opening credits, "And Fred Thompson as Himself." Sure enough, when Sissy Spacek (as Ragghianti) gets thrown in jail, there's Fred Thompson Himself, wearing a white cowboy hat, riding to the rescue.

Critics called him a natural actor. Paul Attanasio wrote in The Post: "A big man with a booming voice and a noble rock of forehead, Thompson has a way of curling his lips and eyebrows into a look of supercilious contempt that will make you howl."

Movie producers started dialing his number whenever they needed an authority figure who knew how to smoke and cuss and bark orders. His Southern drawl was perfect for lines such as "I imagine you'll tell me what all the hubbub's about" ("The Hunt for Red October") and "Stack 'em, back 'em and rack 'em. Move!" ("Die Hard 2"). Thompson played, among other roles, a Navy admiral, a White House chief of staff, a CIA director and a president of the United States (thrice). Most recently, he has been a district attorney on the hit TV series "Law & Order."

Dick Wolf, the show's producer, calls Thompson "the living definition of command presence."

Thompson says his favorite role was in "Red October": "Got to shoot on the USS Enterprise. And I played a solid guy. I played a military guy. Had military guys tell me over the years that they had officers just like that and I nailed it."

His younger brother, Ken, says that after Fred became famous, "it was a little bit like walking around with Elvis."

Thompson insists he's not aware of how he fills up a room, all that alpha-male stuff that people always mention. "I'm not cognizant of it to this day," he says. Asked to describe himself, he says, "I have an inner peace, and an inner confidence."

He has made some mistakes, had some failures. Sometimes he sounds a note of regret, acknowledging that he hasn't always lived up to his personal standards. He and Sarah divorced just before his first movie came out. During his eight years in the U.S. Senate, he was anything but lazy as a ladies' man, dating a long list of eligible women before marrying his second wife, Jeri Kehn, in 2002.

He has also known great pain: In 2002 he lost his daughter Betsy to an accidental overdose of medication, and in his heartbreak he quit public life. But he also knows how fortunate he has been. How things usually broke his way.

"The lesson you learn in life," he says, "is that the smallest decisions can lead to doors opening in your life that you never could imagine."

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After he announced his bid for the presidency, Fred Thompson returned to Lawrenceburg. About 10,000 people thronged the village square to see the local boy in a suit and tie, thinner than he used to be, talking without notes and pacing the full length of the makeshift stage.

He was just a few steps from where his grandfather had run a little cafe; he could see the spot where he'd been a country lawyer fresh out of school, and the location of the old courthouse, where he'd tried his first case even as buckets were catching the leaks from the ceiling. "The best daddy a boy ever had, and a wonderful daughter, are laid to rest here, in my home," he said.

He thanked his mother, his brother, his sons. He thanked the Lindseys. He thanked Sarah. He'd been blessed, he said.

"I want to tell my former teachers I'm just as surprised to be here as you are to see me up here tonight," he said, and he grinned as the square filled with laughter.