Congress is Congress, whether it's the Continental one in 1775 or the current edition. Horse trading and large egos are the norm.
We were amused to learn that the rock-ribbed and principled John Dickinson of Pennsylvania was played by . . . a Slovenian named Zeljko Ivanek.
Posted by Linkmeister at November 15, 2008 07:24 PM | TrackBackI love that guy. He seems to always play a Southerner (with an accent that sounds South Carolina circa 1860) or a person with a vaguely European accent.
Posted by: Scott at November 15, 2008 07:50 PMIs that right? This is the first time I've seen him.
Posted by: Linkmeister at November 15, 2008 08:09 PMNo, Scott isn't right at all.
Ivanek is a well-respected character actor who often plays lawyers or doctors, usually without any accent whatsoever. I don't think I've ever seen him play either a foreigner or a southerner.
Take a look at the names of some of his characters on that IMDb page, even at the start of his acting career -- Sammy Wheaton (The Edge of Night), Bill Gorton (The Sun Also Rises), George Deever (All My Sons), Mark Dolson (St. Elsewhere), Eddie Saunders (Murder, She Wrote), Mark McGovern (The Practice), James Devlin (Oz). Good American names, and many non-southern settings like Boston, Maine, and Baltimore.
He's also played a number of other historical figures -- astronaut Ken Mattingly (From the Earth to the Moon), Bobby Kennedy (The Rat Pack), Thomas Mann Randolph (Sally Hemings: An American Scandal).
I'm most aware of Ivanek in his continuing role as Assistant State's Attorney Ed Danvers on the great TV series Homicide: Life on the Street.
Posted by: N in Seattle at November 17, 2008 08:37 AM