Numerous Oscar winners and nominees have played Presidents and First Ladies on screen and in TV plays.
Walter Huston, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Sam Waterston, Robert Ryan, Charlton Heston and Hal Holbrook have all played Abraham Lincoln with Liam Neeson set to play him for Spielberg next year.
Ruth Gordon and Mary Tyler Moore are among those who've played Mary Todd Lincoln and Jane Alexander, Eleanor Roosevelt. Geraldine Fitzgerald played Edith Wilson and Ginger Rogers, Dolly Madison. Lionel Barrymore and Charlton Heston have both played Andrew Jackson. Van Helfin played Andrew Johnson and Burgess Meredith played James Madison. Ralph Bellamy played Franklin Delano Roosevelt several times. Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney just won Emmys for playing John and Abigail Adams.
The TV mini-series Backstairs at the White House alone featured Victor Buono and Julie Harris as William Howard and Nellie Taft, Robert Vaughn and Kim Hunter as Woodrow and Ellen Wilson, George Kennedy and Celeste Holm as Warren and and Florence Harding, Lee Grant as Grace Coolidge, Jan Sterling as Lou Hoover, Eileen Heckart as Eleanor Roosevelt, Estelle Parsons as Bess Truman and Barbara Barrie as Mamie Eisenhower.
Beaulh Bondi was nominated for playing Andrew Jackson's wife Rachel in The Gorgeous Hussy though technically she was not a First Lady as she died on December 22, 1828 after he was elected but before he took the oath of office.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if Frank Langella is indeed nominated for Frost/Nixon, he'll be the first American actor to do so for playing an American president. We had two Canadians (Raymond Massey as Lincoln, Alexander Knox as Wilson) and twice a Welsh (Hopkins as Nixon and Adams). Even of the actresses who were nominated for playing a first lady, one (Garson as Eleanor Roosevelt) was Irish. (Joan Allen has the distinction of being the only American to be recognized by the Academy for playing a resident of the White House).
Anyway, playing a British monarch (and other politic British figures) was always a safer way to get a nomination (and a win) than playing a president. Maybe this fetish of the Academy is the reason that they were only impressed when those American characters were portrayed by subjects of the British Crown, which added them some needed royal aura.
