First Ladies: Their Lives, Their Influence, Their Imitators

For one of the most buzzed-about movie performances this awards season, an Israeli-born actress and a Chilean director teamed up for an all-American tale about one of our greatest White House icons. In Jackie, Jerusalem-born Natalie Portman plays Jackie Kennedy in the aftermath of the 1963 assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy. Director Pablo Larraín’s first English-language film, released in December 2016, was widely lauded by critics.

In the film, Jackie spins the lasting mythology of her late husband’s administration through interviews with an unnamed magazine reporter (Billy Crudup), casting it in a golden “Camelot” glow.

“She was so smart,” says Portman, 35, nominated for an Oscar for the role. “[She] really understood that the people who write history are the people who really define it. The story you write is more important than what actually happened, if you come up with a good enough tale.”

Portman studied audio and video interviews of Jackie to learn, in particular, how to convey her unique accent.

“There’s the New York of her childhood, the Long Island, sort of Bouvier side, the eccentric Grey Gardens kind of family—she says things like tahhlk. And then this kind of prep school, finishing school aspect, almost Mid-Atlantic, like rahhhther. And her L’s were light, almost like a faux-British thing. It’s a real unusual mix.”

There have been more than 50 portrayals of Jackie in movies and on TV. Do you remember these?

After six years of playing one of Charlie’s Angels_, Jaclyn Smith took on the title role in the ABC TV movie Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (1981), which focused on the first-lady-to-be’s life before, during and after meeting “Jack” Kennedy.

Orange Is the New Black’s Blair Brown played Jackie Kennedy in the five-hour NBC miniseries Kennedy (1983), starring Martin Sheen as the 35th president and timed to the 20th anniversary of his assassination.

See 9 of Our Favorite Fake First Ladies

Roma Downey, who’d soon go on to be in Touched by an Angel, was Jackie Kennedy alongside Stephen Collins’ JFK in the NBC miniseries A Woman Named Jackie (1991). The three-night event spanned Jackie’s life from college through the White House years and her marriage to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

Jill Hennessy—Jane Fellows in TV’s Madam Secretary and Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh in Crossing Jordan—was cast as Jackie in the two-part NBC miniseries Jackie, Ethel, Joan: The Women of Camelot (2001), about the lives of the three Kennedy brothers’ wives.

The fact-based movie Thirteen Days (2001) featured model-turned-actress Stephanie Romanov as Jackie Kennedy to Bruce Greenwood’s JFK—and Kevin Costner as political consultant Kenneth P. O’Donnell, who helped steer the American diplomatic team through a tense confrontation with the Soviet Union over the deployment of intercontinental ballistic weapons in Italy, Turkey and Cuba—less than 100 miles from Florida. The Cuban Missile Crisis, as it’s known, came perilously close to escalating to full-scale nuclear war.

The role of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis in America’s Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story (2003), a TBS television movie about JFK’s son, was played by British actress Jacqueline Bisset, a big star in the 1970s movies Airport, The Deep and Murder on the Orient Express.

Criminal Minds alum Jeanne Tripplehorn was Jackie in the HBO TV movie Grey Gardens (2009), about the first lady’s eccentric aunt and cousin, “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale (Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore, respectively).

In Parkland (2013), a movie about the intersecting lives of several characters around the Kennedy assassination, Kat Steffens (Jackie) was part of an ensemble that also included Zac Efron, Billy Bob Thornton, Ron Livingston and Marcia Gay Harden.

Ginnifer Goodwin, now starring as Snow White in the TV series Once Upon a Time, was Jackie in the National Geographic Channel’s TV movie Killing Kennedy (2013), based on the best-selling book by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard about JFK (played by Rob Lowe) and his assassination. “I just didn’t think I resembled her at all,” Goodwin says. “But our hair and makeup team did an amazing job.”

Next up to play Jackie is Katie Holmes, who will star in the upcoming Reelz TV miniseries The Kennedys: After Camelot, focusing on Jackie’s life following the death of President Kennedy. Holmes will be reprising her role from the 2011 Reelz miniseries The Kennedys. “It was really an honor to play her,” Holmes says. “She changed the way first ladies were perceived and how our country was perceived when JFK was in office.”

Of course, Jackie O isn’t the only first lady to be portrayed onscreen. Here are more leading ladies who have played first ladies on TV and in the movies.

In director D.W. Griffith’s first “talkie,” Missouri native Kay Hammond played Mary Todd opposite Walter Huston’s “Great Emancipator” in Abraham Lincoln (1930), a biopic of our 16th president.

Best known for her dancing, the naturally red-haired Ginger Rogers “sat out” Magnificent Doll (1946) and colored her hair blond to play the fun-loving Dolley Madison, who falls into a love triangle with Thomas Jefferson’s VP, Aaron Burr (David Niven), and pres-to-be James Madison (Burgess Meredith).

Jane Alexander was Eleanor Roosevelt to Edward Herrmann’s FDR in the TV miniseries Eleanor and Franklin (1976), which won 11 Emmys, a Golden Globe and a Peabody. It was based on author Joseph P. Lash’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biography. “That was probably my most remarkable role,” says the actress, who starred on TV’s The Good Wife as Judge Suzanne Morris and was also the chairwoman of the National Endowment of the Arts from 1993 through 1997. “I felt so lucky to be immersed in the life of that woman—a fascinating woman to explore.”

Patty Duke received a 1984 Emmy nomination for her portrayal of America’s first first lady, Martha Washington, in the CBS miniseries George Washington, which also featured Barry Bostwick as the “Father of Our Country,” plus Hal Holbrook, Lloyd Bridges, James Mason and Robert Stack.

Joan Allen, who recently starred in the ABC TV series The Family, was Oscar-nominated for her role as Pat Nixon in the movie Nixon (1995), opposite Anthony Hopkins (also Oscar-nominated) as President Richard Nixon. “There’s not much, obviously, that’s public record about Nixon and what happened during his presidency and his political life,” says Allen. “But very little is known [about] what did these people say to each other? I gained a lot of compassion for her. She was more private, more mysterious.”

Two years before beginning her starring role in TV’s Desperate Housewives, Felicity Huffman gave a strong performance as Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson in HBO’s Path to War (2002), which featured Michael Gambon as LBJ.

Laura Linney received Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild honors for her portrayal of our nation’s second first lady, Abigail Adams, in the acclaimed seven-part HBO miniseries John Adams (2008), which starred Paul Giamatti in the title role. “Originally the role was very much as a woman who stands by her man,” says Linney, “and I wasn’t interested in portraying her that way at all. She was not a stereotypical, long-suffering wife who just chastised her husband when he was grumpy and took care of the kids. She was extremely capable and she was forward thinking. She was clearly a feminist.”

In Oliver Stone’s W. (2008), Elizabeth Banks stepped out from the mostly comedic roles of her past—Wet Hot American Summer, Meet Dave, Fred Claus, The 40 Year Old Virgin—to morph into the seriousness required to play Laura Bush, the loyal wife to Dubya (Josh Brolin). In the same movie, Ellen Burstyn portrayed another first lady—and another Bush, Barbara, the wife of George H.W. (James Cromwell) and George W.’s mother. Laura Bush, says Banks, was “a very complicated person who is very disciplined about keeping her private life private. I relied a lot on an interview she did with Charlie Rose on PBS. She said over and over again that she felt her job as a first lady, first and foremost, was to take care of the president so he could do his job. I don’t think she gets enough credit for being the rock behind him and having a lot of backbone.”

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013) was a historical drama about Cecil Gaines, who served eight U.S. presidents in the White House as their butler. Jane Fonda made an appearance as first lady Nancy Reagan, wife of President Ronald Reagan (Alan Rickman), and Minka Kelly portrayed Jackie opposite James Marsden as John F. Kennedy. Fonda says she wrote Nancy Reagan a letter seeking her advice as she prepared for the role. A very visible Vietnam War protester during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Ronald Reagan was governor of California, the actress says she was surprised when she heard Nancy was happy with her portrayal. “Back when she was feisty, she wasn’t so nice to me,” Fonda says, chalking up the former first lady’s change of attitude to the passage of time. “We all mellow.”

In the HBO TV movie All The Way (2016), Bryan Cranston reprised his role from the Tony-winning play as Lyndon Johnson taking office as our 36th president in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and Melissa Leo received an Emmy nomination for her role as wife Lady Bird.