A look at President Richard M. Nixon—a man carrying the fate of the world on his shoulders while battling the self-destructive demands from within—spanning his troubled boyhood in California to the shocking Watergate scandal that would end his Presidency.
Acting
Hopkins' physical transformation—those tics, that flop sweat, that NOSE.
Direction
Stone's unhinged montages: grainy footage, operatic music, complete madness.
Cinematography
Robert Richardson's high-contrast nightmare—White House as haunted house.
Director
Oliver Stone
Anthony Hopkins
Richard Nixon
Joan Allen
Pat Nixon
Powers Boothe
Alexander Haig
Ed Harris
E. Howard Hunt
Bob Hoskins
J. Edgar Hoover
E.G. Marshall
John Mitchell
David Paymer
Ron Ziegler
David Hyde Pierce
John Dean
Paul Sorvino
Henry Kissinger
Mary Steenburgen
Hannah Nixon
J.T. Walsh
John Ehrlichman
James Woods
H.R. Haldeman
Brian Bedford
Clyde Tolson
Kevin Dunn
Charles Colson
Fyvush Finkel
Murray Chotiner
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Hopkins initially refused the role, telling Stone 'I'm not bald, I'm not American, and I'm not going to do this.' Stone wore him down with 50+ phone calls.
Released months before Clinton's re-election, the film's depiction of presidential paranoia and surveillance felt eerily contemporary—Stone later claimed the timing was accidental. The Nixon family publicly denounced it as 'character assassination.'
US
