Top 25 Fictional DC Resident: #24 Andrew Shepard
Name: President Andrew Shepherd
Address: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Year of Residence: 1995
When everything else goes wrong in life – your bill won’t make it to the floor, your wife has lost her long battle with cancer, your chief of staff has more of a handle on your presidential staff than you do – you can always count on the love between and environmental lobbyist and a hot widowed president. I love movies.
Everyone remembers President Andrew Shepherd from 1995’s “The American President.” His perfectly coiffed silver hair, his extremely strategic yet behind-the-scenes best friend, confidant, and chief of staff, AJ. The fiery red environmental lobbyist that he fell in love with – the first woman he’d paid any attention to after the loss of his wife, the mother of his pre-teen strings-playing daughter.
Remember when all he wanted to do what buy Sydney some flowers because he broke their date at the last minute? I don’t quite think a flower-shop owner would faint like the one in the movie should President Bush show up, but the point was taken – he was the most powerful man in the world and couldn’t manage to buy a dozen roses.
President Shepherd (“Andy” to his beloved), thank you for providing this memorable line: “I’m calling the organization of the United Brotherhood of It’s None of Your Damn Business, Lewis. I’ll be with you in a second.”
It’s every actor’s dream to play the role of the president. Well, maybe not Johnny Depp. Or Jack Black. Or Dakota Fanning. Anyway, I think Michael Douglas did a good job, but not as good as Kevin Kline in “Dave”.
My favorite DC reference in that movie is when Annette Benning is late to a White House function and she whines, “I was stuck in traffic at Dupont Circle” and Douglas replies archly “Oh, Dupont Circle.” It’s so funny how hard the two actors sell it, I always wonder if Benning went to the circle as research, just so she could get that extra conviction in her voice!
Hi, I’m a movie nerd. His daughter played the trombone, not strings.
Movie nerd away!