When actors play real-life, well-known people, they either set themselves up for Oscars (Sean Penn as Harvey Milk) or ridicule (Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes). Consider these two casting coups: Anne Hathaway as Judy Garland in the Weinsteins' Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland and Julianne Moore as Hillary Clinton in Special Relationship (by Peter Morgan of The Queen and Frost/Nixon fame), with Dennis Quaid as Bill. Hathaway's Oscars duet with Hugh Jackman showed she could sing, and she did some Garland-worthy scenery-chewing in Rachel Getting Married, but Moore seems a little too ethereal to play a tough customer like Hillary. (Quaid, however, can do devilish charm in his sleep, so his Bill should be fun even if it means he probably can't show off his abs like he does in every movie he's ever done.) Anyone want to bet on who's going to rock and who's going to flop?
This article appears in Mar 25-31, 2009.