Pressure opens in theaters May 29, 2026.
You might think actors as different as Robin Williams, Robert Duvall, Tom Selleck, and Brendan Fraser would never play the same role — let alone the same real person — but you’d be mistaken. Usually, multiple actors who’ve played the same character possess something in common — a physical resemblance, or a similar personality, especially if the role is a historical figure. But I can’t find anything that Williams, Duvall, Selleck, or Fraser remotely have in common as either actors or people, except that they’ve all played Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower, the US Army general who led the Allies to victory in World War II and later became the 34th President of the United States.
There are specific physical and vocal traits that American viewers expect from any actor portraying a real President on screen. When an actor is cast as John F. Kennedy, for example, one expects they’re handsome and have a charm or wit befitting the President who hung out with the Rat Pack and slept with movie stars. Actors who have played Abraham Lincoln have a lean, craggy look (his height can be cheated on-screen) and can convey that “plain folks” aura we imagine the log cabin President possessed. For Franklin D. Roosevelt, the actor must capture the patrician air and steely elegance of the President who hosted inspirational fireside chats as he led the US through the Great Depression and the early years of WWII.
That Eisenhower can be played by such disparate actors as the aforementioned quartet speaks volumes about him as a blank slate open for dramatic interpretation. Besides his bald head and broad grin, Eisenhower lacked any notable traits that are burned into the public consciousness, and he lacked a distinctive speaking voice that helped make FDR, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, and Reagan ripe for impersonation. (Any actor cast as JFK knows that damn accent is a make-or-break part of their performance.)
Eisenhower was President during the 1950s — a conservative, prosperous era where Americans spread conformity into suburbia as the Cold War raged and the Civil Rights movement and rock ‘n roll emerged to challenge post-war America’s racial segregation policies and cultural norms, respectively. If anything, the lasting public image of President Eisenhower from this era is that of the Golfer-in-Chief. In other words, he was very vanilla.
For modern audiences who aren’t students of World War II, Eisenhower may be best known for his farewell speech warning about “the military-industrial complex,” seen via archival footage famously utilized in Oliver Stone’s film, JFK. But even in that, the real Eisenhower is emotionally staid and physically unremarkable.
In my review of Lee Daniels’ The Butler, I noted how casting “Robin Williams is an oddball choice as Eisenhower, with one of Hollywood’s most manic actors clearly restraining himself to play the decorated, but dull chief executive.” Williams acknowledged as much in this promotional featurette for The Butler, saying that playing Eisenhower “was a tough job for me” and praising Ike as “a quiet ego among large egos.”
Williams at least gave Ike a pulse, imbuing Eisenhower with what he called (in that featurette) a “quiet strength.” While The Butler shows Eisenhower’s use of executive authority to uphold and implement desegregation, filmmakers generally depict Eisenhower the General rather than the President; in fairness, Ike at war is far more dramatic than the President who golfs.
Indeed, three of the four performances cited here belong to works that chronicle Eisenhower’s time as the Supreme Commander in Europe during World War II; the “I Like Ike” wet blanket politician is not to be found in these next three projects.
The year 1979 saw Robert Duvall play three military tough guys: Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now; Lt. Col. Wilbur “Bull” Meechum in The Great Santini; and General Eisenhower in the TV miniseries, Ike (aka Ike: The War Years).
Ike: The War Years spotlights his close relationship with Lt. Kay Summersby (Lee Remick), his chauffeur and personal secretary. The miniseries shows how Eisenhower — who had never seen combat during his long career in the Army — managed to finally get out from behind a desk and into the field. Known for his skill at handling logistics, Ike finally gets his chance to shine in Operation Torch and Operation Overlord.
Duvall brings the same red-blooded masculinity to his portrayal of Ike as he did to his roles in Apocalypse Now and The Great Santini, albeit more stolid and circumspect thanks to the softening effect Kay has on Ike’s gruff personality. Despite what the miniseries implies, a romantic relationship between Ike and Kay would later be discredited.
Magnum, P.I. star Tom Selleck shaved his head and iconic mustache to play Eisenhower in the 2004 telepic, Ike: Countdown to D-Day. Like Robin Williams, Selleck said in a promotional interview that “I’m not sure I would’ve cast myself as Ike.” The film’s writer and executive producer, Lionel Chetwynd, said in that same featurette that Selleck was cast for the qualities he shared with Eisenhower, “that confidence, that inner decency, that self-respect and respect for others that only comes with self-respect, that ability to lead without dominating.”
Despite being too tall and leading man-handsome for the role, Selleck brings a rugged “Americaness” and quiet but undeniable authority to his interpretation of Eisenhower, who must navigate the egos and politics involved in forging the international coalition needed to plan and pull off the D-Day invasion. There’s a humanity and solemnity to Selleck’s Eisenhower as the prospect of sending thousands of soldiers to their deaths weighs heavily on him.
Now, Brendan Fraser also portrays Eisenhower in the lead-up to D-Day in Pressure. The movie focuses on the 72 hours before the Allied invasion as bad weather could’ve forced the cancellation of the operation that paved the way for the downfall of the Nazis. Fraser — best known for his comedic turns in the Mummy franchise and George of the Jungle before winning the Academy Award as Best Actor for The Whale — has acknowledged the blank canvas that Eisenhower presented to him as a performer.
“What struck me instantly was, I had no reference of who Ike was as a personality,” Fraser says in the film’s production notes. “But Eisenhower — to my understanding — was the last word in all the decisions that got made, and he placed that responsibility squarely on his own shoulders. He had even written letters, famous ones, in the event of success, and in the event of failure. In the event of success, he thanked the troops for their accomplishment, and said ‘We’re just getting started. ’And in failure, he took responsibility, and said ‘If there’s any reason this did not succeed, the fault is mine and mine alone.’ That spoke to me. I jumped in with both feet, and I gave myself as much intellectual ammunition as I could bear.”
For Robin Williams, Robert Duvall, Tom Selleck, and now Brendan Fraser, the role of Dwight D. Eisenhower challenged them all in how to portray a very ordinary man who accomplished extraordinary things. Each of their portrayals is markedly different from the other’s; they may as well have been playing four entirely different men.
Forced by Ike’s inherent plainness to explore his inner life instead, Williams, Duvall, Selleck, and Fraser all nevertheless succeeded in emotionally connecting viewers with him at these pivotal moments in his military and political career.
Eisenhower might not have had the charisma of JFK or the gravitas of FDR, but his very ordinariness and strength of character allowed four wildly different actors to create distinct portrayals of him. Surely, that’s more important than an exact impersonation.
