The office of the President of the United States is way more famous than any specific president. Compared to, say, the king and queen of England, a new person gets to be the head of state every four or eight years via election rather than inheritance. This means you can get away with inventing a fictional President for whatever film or series you want without shattering the audience’s suspension of disbelief—making up a member of the British royal family who’s been in the public eye since birth and destined to take up the throne is a lot less buyable. The contradiction key to being the president is that they are both easily replaced and irreplaceable at the same time—the blend between drab bureaucracy and huge prestige is exactly what makes parody presidents such fertile ground for comedy.
To make up a president and then call them an idiot is to undermine how readily films try to cash in on gravitas by dropping in the head statesman into their undeserving drama. No need for patriotism or respect with these White House residents.
For clarity, we’re not talking about actors parodying real-life presidents like Richard Nixon’s appearance in Black Dynamite or Ronald Reagan in the Wet Hot American Summer series. We’re talking about when a fictional president is used as a way to investigate the folly and foolhardiness of America’s swollen presence on the global stage. Many actors have classic Hollywood good looks that suggest they could play the president; many others are associated with warm or villainous characters, which automatically makes us read their presidential characters in a positive or negative light. With Charles Dance playing Edison Wolcott, the elderly and borderline senile U.S. president in the phantasmagorical G7 summit satire Rumours, here are 10 hilarious and absolutely fictional satirical presidents.
1. President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) in Dr. Strangelove
There are many ways to describe President Merkin Muffley in Stanley Kubrick’s enduring nuclear war satire Dr. Strangelove: measured, nasal-toned, balding, played by Peter Sellers. In a juvenile attempt to emasculate a powerful man, the president’s first and last names both play on terms regarding female genitalia, which is a good summation of how he’s seen by the bullish and sometimes deranged generals in the War Room—he’s slight, feminized, and useless for the teeth-gnashing and headbutting of combat. As Muffley faces General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) across the massive War Room table, Kubrick creates one of the most unexpected and winning comedy dynamics in an American political farce—even though he plays other, more heightened characters in Strangelove, Sellers’ dry, flat tones clash with Scott’s ridiculous and hysterical energy, driving them and the fate of the world closer to obliteration. Scott does a lot of yelling in his dramatic roles, but this is a comedic highlight for his eye-popping rage, and Sellers’ bespectacled bureaucrat is so infuriating to the military class because he refuses to indulge in red-blooded patriotism.
2. President Thomas “Tug” Benson (Lloyd Bridges) in Hot Shots! Part Deux
In Hot Shots!, Thomas “Tug” Benson is an admiral in charge of the secret mission Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) risks his life in; by the time of Part Deux, he’s ascended to the presidency. Bridges takes the template of his character—a parody of recent president, former naval aviator, and Japanese Prime Minister vomiter George H.W. Bush—and becomes ungovernable. Benson is impossibly senile; he’s a cantankerous, lecherous, and racist buffoon who Bridges lends a sense of livewire excitement and confusion in all his Part Deux scenes. It’s unclear if Hot Shots! will ever receive as sincere a critical reevaluation as other broad, crass comedies like Top Secret! and Jackass, but Bridges’ performance remains a delight, and probably shares some connective tissue with the many aging occupants of the Oval Office.
3. President James Dale (Jack Nicholson) in Mars Attacks!
By the time Jack Nicholson played the President in Tim Burton’s intentionally hokey ‘50s sci-fi pastiche Mars Attacks!, he had been canonized as one of the elder statesmen of New Hollywood and recognized as one of the most appealing and celebrated actors alive. It meant that, despite playing a lot of gruff, unfriendly characters in his day, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to see him as the leader of the free world—in fact, it added an enjoyable layer of electricity to his performance. But Nicholson didn’t just play gruff antiheroes, he played a lot of weirdos, and it’s tough to imagine any of his characters in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Chinatown, The Last Detail, or The Shining making it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Maybe it was Burton’s intent to undermine the types of men that America sees having dependable, sturdy, and confident presidential potential—and Nicholson’s expressive frowns and forehead creases are well-used amongst the military farce the aliens discover on Earth. But like most of the satire in Mars Attacks!, Burton is happier gesturing at substance than actually exploring it, and we’re left with a casting gag that seems to be, in its entirety, “and Jack Nicholson is the President!”
4. The President (Tim Robbins) in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Even though he’s the only character on this list to not receive a first or last name, when it comes to the Austin Power series, the only character complexity needed is an accent and a cocked eyebrow, and by god does Tim Robbins deliver. The President is seemingly in charge of a pathetic boy’s club (probably not that far off from Washington in 1969) who initially mock Dr. Evil’s ransom of one hundred billion dollars—trust Robbins to ham up his derisive laugh and dismissive comeback to aggressive levels—then cower at a clip of the White House blowing up in Independence Day, and are finally flummoxed by Dr. Evil’s array of ‘90s slang and catchphrases. Robbins is no stranger to Washington satire, but it will come as no surprise that The Spy Who Shagged Me isn’t his sharpest effort; this role is probably the biggest gulf between how difficult the job is for the character and how difficult the job was for the actor.
5. President Diego Devlin (George Clooney) in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
This isn’t the only uber-charming A-lister on this list who took advantage of their movie star persona to play a smarmy, high-ranking politician in both comedic and dramatic films. After playing the head of the superspy agency OSS in the first film, Clooney returns via Skype call with his trademark black censor bar sunglasses to demand that a child go into dangerous active duty, as is tradition for Robert Rodriguez’s kids films. Alas, this is not the time or place for Clooney’s character to reveal a seedy, reflexive corruptness like his presidential nominee character in The Ides Of March does. Also, this isn’t the only president in the Spy Kids universe, as Christopher McDonald plays the president in Spy Kids 2: The Island Of Lost Dreams and We Can Be Heroes, although they may not be the same characters, and in the latter film he is a secret alien. I bet Clooney is kicking himself for pulling the short straw.
6. President Baxter Harris (Leslie Nielsen) in Scary Movie 3 and 4
Rewatching the Scary Movie series in 2024 is a unique experience of guffawing at its brazen stupidity and wincing at the unnecessarily cruelty that was suspect even in the early 2000s. Leslie Nielsen’s performance as President Baxter Harris in the third and fourth films, however, thankfully falls into the former category. Nielsen is famous for his deadpan delivery but that doesn’t take into consideration just how often he mugs the camera, tells filthy jokes, and embraces clownish physical comedy, and it’s all on display across these later sequels, where President Harris is besotted with a couple of alien invasion threats that have him assault disabled White House attendants and moon the United Nations. Nobody’s calling it high art, but Nielsen nails the self-seriousness with streaks of abrupt urgency that feels crucial to dramatic presidential performances.
7. President Arnold Schwarzenegger (Harry Shearer) in The Simpsons Movie
Okay, yes, technically Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t a work of fiction, but his presidency definitely was. When Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, and the million other people behind The Simpsons decided to broaden the hit series’ televisual horizons, they used a presidential cameo to sell the huge stakes and governmental intervention inflicted on Springfield. Instead of opting for an impression of then-current President George W. Bush (parodying Bush presidents wasn’t exactly untrodden ground for The Simpsons), the film comically suggests that then-governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger would graduate to the Oval Office—comical because, well, there’s laws against Austrians becoming the president. He’s voiced by Harry Shearer, who also lends his voice to The Simpson’s Schwarzenegger equivalent character Rainier Wolfcastle—in fact, this version of Arnie was actually modeled after Rainier’s design. President Schwarzenegger may feel like low-hanging fruit, but the quip of “I was elected to lead, not to read” feels like it would swing a lot of voters today.
8. President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) in Veep
Veep creator Armando Iannucci purposefully made the show’s Vice President protagonist a woman because there was no precedent in White House history, so the audience wouldn’t be constantly reading between imaginary lines to guess who the character was based on—as Jen Chaney’s Vulture recap of Selina Meyer’s presidential timeline pointed out earlier this year, in 2024 the White House took a leaf out of HBO’s book. At the end of Season 3, Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) becomes president after the First Lady tries to take her own life, but this grounded and severe story choice does not soften how embarrassing and farcical the subsequent seasons get. Iannucci has always been interested in how ambitious people become pathetic rather than monstrous as they chase power, and Louis-Dreyfus’ easy charm with a barely-concealed spiritual ugliness has never been better utilized than this two-termed acerbic White House satire.
9. President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) in Don’t Look Up
It’s funny to take an actor who’s as universally adored and cherished as Meryl Streep and, when fulfilling many people’s dreams to see her as the country’s president, make her a blowhard pig-headed opportunist who’s an unmistakable villain. Orlean rides the line between a shrewd caricature or a misguided straw woman on writer-director Adam McKay’s part, but the assurance with which Streep lampoons the narcissistic arch-conservative mindset effectively balances the gravity of being led by a power-hungry capitalist loon and the hilarity of how willingly, transparently self-centered their behavior is. At the time of release, Streep had been very vocal in her criticisms of President Trump, but her performance feels like it has more connective tissue with a fictional politician she played 16 years prior: Eleanor Prentiss Shaw, a conniving senator in Jonathan Demme’s The Manchurian Candidate remake. The manipulative head of a Washington dynasty, a dangerous populist moron… is there any type of political ghoul Streep can’t play?!
10. President Edison Wolcott (Charles Dance) in Rumours
We’re reminded of several real presidents in Charles Dance’s portrayal of Edison Wolcott: he walks with a cane, reminding us of the wheelchair-using FDR; he’s an educated, cultured man, frequently citing authors and leaders, which calls to mind the classical bookworm Thomas Jefferson; save for a modest transatlantic twang, he fully talks with a British accent, which historians gauge would have been the case for the first three presidents: Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. But the beauty of Dance’s increasingly doddering grandpa performance is that, like the six other world leaders trapped in the G7 summit’s woodland fantasia, it’s difficult to pin down if the character is really saying anything, or if all the sly references and touchstones are just a way to confuse and mislead an audience looking for symbolic political commentary. One of Rumours’ greatest strengths is that co-directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson have taken a premise rich with resonant political potential and eschewed the chance to make easy, historically-specific jokes—rather, the joke is that the president is sleepy, makes the Italian prime minister into his lackey who supplies him with cured meats, and wears the American flag as a dinner bib.
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