9 Famous Fictional First Ladies From the Big and Small Screens

Fake first ladies—the wives of fictional presidents on TV and in the movies—come in all shapes and sizes, offering everything from comic relief to dark political designs. Here are nine of the most unforgettable performances.

Ashley Judd didn’t stick around long in Olympus Has Fallen (2013). Her character, first lady Margaret Asher, met an untimely, unfortunate demise early in the movie, about a North Korea-led guerrilla assault on the White House and the president (Aaron Eckhart).

Primary Colors (1998) was a fact-based comedy loosely based on Bill Clinton’s first campaign for president, and British actress Emma Thompson did a fine turn as Susan Stanton—a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton—as she helped get her husband, a charismatic Southern Democratic governor (John Travolta), into the White House.

In the movie comedy Dave (1993), Sigourney Weaver was Ellen Mitchell, the wife of a U.S. president (Kevin Kline) who’s replaced by a lookalike to avoid a scandal when he goes into a coma.

Nicolas Cage played the Secret Service agent assigned the “honors” of protecting prickly fictional former first lady Tess Carlisle (Shirley MacLaine) in the comedy Guarding Tess (1994).

Mary McDonnell had a tough time of it when aliens attacked in Independence Day (1996). As first lady to President Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman), her character Marilyn Whitmore got injured badly and never recovered. Another reason to blast those aliens!

In the critically acclaimed, award-winning NBC drama The West Wing (1999–2006), Stockard Channing received an Emmy (and was nominated five other times) for playing first lady Abbey Bartlet, the physician wife of President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen).

For fake first ladies, it’s hard to forget Glenn Close as Marsha Dale, the power-hungry, Pat Nixon-ish wife of President James Dale (Jack Nicholson) in director Tim Burton’s quirky, campy, star-packed Mars Attacks! (1996), which also featured Annette Bening, Danny DeVito, Pierce Brosnan, Michael J. Fox, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tom Jones and Natalie Portman.

Juilliard-trained actress Penny Johnson Jerald was the manipulative, calculating wife of President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) in the TV series 24 (2001–2010). She also played former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in two 9/11 TV movies.

Golden Globe winner Robin Wright plays the formidable Claire Underwood, first lady to Kevin Spacey‘s equally fearsome Frank Underwood,  on Netflix’s twisty political drama House of Cards.