10 Actors Who Could Play Donald Trump In A Film Biopic

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Donald.

Alec Baldwin Trump SNL
NBC

Love him or loathe him, whether you're currently celebrating or obsessively playing Fallout in a bid to prepare for a potential post-apocalyptic future, nobody can deny that what Donald Trump has achieved is nothing short of incredible. Here we have a reality star and inconsistent businessman with no political experience whatsoever about to succeed Barack Obama as the president of one of the most powerful nations in the world.

But WhatCulture isn't a political site, dammit! So instead of trying to predict how his time in the White House will go, we will instead take a look at who might play him and why in the inevitable cinematic adaptations of his crazy feat. If there's anything that Hollywood likes it's actors playing presidents, whether it's Daniel Day-Lewis' striking performance as Abraham Lincoln, or Benjamin Walker's portrayal of Honest Abe as a vampire hunter, the latter of which is probably historically inaccurate. Probably.

The Donald isn't too popular in Hollywood these days - it's long been forgotten that he helped Macaulay Culkin when he was lost in New York - so it's fair to assume that A-listers aren't forming a queue to have the chance to play Trump. But not all films have to be celebrations of the individual - they can simply be a dramatisation of events.

Here we take a look at the 10 actors that will hopefully be stunnered by Stone Cold in a biopic about the life and times of the 45th president of the United States...

10. Johnny Depp

Johnny Depp Donald Trump Art Of The Deal Funnyordie
Funny or Die

Johnny Depp is certainly no stranger to physical transformations in his film roles, demonstrated by his brilliant portrayal of the brutal Bostonian gangster Whitey Bulger in 2015's Black Mass, as well as just about every Tim Burton film ever made. And the fact that he's already played Donald Trump onscreen before in Funny or Die's The Art of the Deal, a short film spoof of a humble-bragging (or straight-up bragging) book written by Trump in the '80s, means that Depp surprisingly has prior experience in the role.

Depp arguably channeled more of Robert De Niro's mannerisms rather than Trump's in The Art of the Deal, and the voice was anything but perfect, but it's important to remember that the film is essentially a big joke so it can't be held against him. What's most significant is how strikingly similar Depp looked to Trump in the short film thanks to some fantastic make-up work, which means that even though Depp is 17 years younger than Trump (as well as looking about 40 years younger than him), age is simply only a number in Hollywood.

As Depp put so much effort into mocking Trump it won't surprise you to hear that he is not a fan, so the only realistic way he would sign on to play him in a movie is if said movie wasn't showing Trump in a good light. Or conversely he and Funny or Die can just make a feature-length version of The Art of the Deal, but then there's every chance that he won't be allowed back into the country (which he probably wouldn't mind, to be honest).

Contributor
Contributor

Aspiring screenwriter. Film & TV Production BA (Hons) graduate. Currently studying MA Screenwriting at LJMU. Addicted to Breaking Bad and Chinese food.