Fred Dalton Thompson is a Washington-Hollywood hybrid: Twice elected to the U.S. Senate, he is ... a screen actor who has starred in the TV series Law & Order. He grew up in Tennessee and began a law career in 1967. He served as a U.S. Attorney (1969-72) and got involved in national politics under Tennessee Senator Howard Baker, an association that put Senate co-counsel Thompson smack in the middle of the investigation of Watergate and the Richard Nixon White House (1973-74). Thompson later worked as a lawyer and lobbyist in Nashville and Washington D.C. He fell into acting when invited to play himself in the movie Marie (1985), a drama based on a real-life political scandal in Tennessee, in which Thompson defended whistleblower Marie Ragghianti. Thompson was a natural on screen, and during the 1980s he had a remarkable run of authoritarian character roles in top-tier features such as No Way Out (1987, starring Kevin Costner), Days of Thunder (1990, starring Tom Cruise), The Hunt for Red October (1990, starring Sean Connery) and In the Line of Fire (1993, starring Clint Eastwood). Thompson returned to Tennessee and national politics in 1994 and was elected to the U.S. Senate (filling the seat formerly held by Al Gore, who had become vice president under Bill Clinton).