Hollywood’s Real Legal Eagle

“I guess I have been pretty lucky,” says Fred Dalton Thompson, the minority counsel in the 1973 Senate Watergate Hearings who has a lucrative second career as an actor.

This year alone, the Tennessee attorney, who keeps offices in Washington and Nashville, has appeared in three box-office hits, “The Hunt for Red October,” “Days of Thunder” and “Die Hard 2.”

Thompson, though, isn’t awestruck by his Hollywood success. “I don’t want to sound blase,” he explains, “but I am not surprised at anything that happens. I’ve just been at a certain place at a certain time.”

Throughout his law career, Thompson has turned what could have been foolish decisions into gold. “I left the U.S. Attorney’s

office, where I thoroughly enjoyed prosecuting cases, to take a non-paid position with Sen. Howard Baker’s campaign for re-election in 1972,” he recounts. “Watergate came around right after that so he called me to be on the minority counsel.”

He also took on the seemingly hopeless case of Marie Ragghianti, chairwoman of the Tennessee Pardons and Parole Board, who was unlawfully dismissed by the governor. “Marie’s case didn’t look like much on the front end,” says Thompson, “but the case developed.” The governor ended up in jail after an investigation uncovered corruption in his office.

When the case was turned into the 1985 film “Marie, a True Story,” Thompson was asked to play himself in the movie. Though the film flopped, he got great reviews and has been moonlighting as an actor ever since.

Thompson isn’t the only Watergate-veteran-turned-actor. “I remember when I went to the makeup room the first day of the movie ‘Feds,’ looking over to the chair next to me,” he says. “It was a gentleman I hadn’t seen in a long time--Gordon Liddy. The last time I’d seen him was in the committee room when he was taking the Fifth Amendment. It was like old home week.”