FRED THOMPSON
With his authoritative persona and resonating baritone voice, the late Fred Thompson almost always played commanding men, and he did so quite well.
He is perhaps best known for his numerous appearances on the popular TV show Law And Order, as District Attorney Arthur Branch (1999-2007). Or maybe you remember him as an accomplished politician. He was a Republican United States Senator from Tennessee from 1994-2002. He actually ran a credible presidential campaign in 2007, but he didn’t win any primaries, dropped out of the race and endorsed John McCain.
His movie roles were confined to a few years, but were quite well done. In the pulsating film version of Tom Clancy’s The Hunt For Red October (1990). Thompson plays Rear Admiral Joshua Painter, commander of the US Empire Carrier Battle Group, enlisted to stop the erratic Russian sub if need be. The film belongs to Sean Connery as the Soviet sub captain, but Fred Thompson carries his role well.
Days Of Thunder (1990) features Tom Cruise as a star stock car driver and Nicole Kidman as the love interest. Fred Thompson has a nice turn as Big John, the president of NASCAR. The film also features a number or real-life race car drivers, such as Rusty Wallace and Richard Petty. The racing sequences are very authentic. 
Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990) is almost as good as the first one, with Bruce Willis doing completely impossible things to thwart the very bad guys. Fred Thompson’s part is small- he plays the head of Dulles Airport, where much of the action takes place.
Fred Thompson has a bit part (Tom Broadbent) in the 1991 version of Cape Fear. And although it features Robert DeNiro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, it is a far cry from the 1962 version. In that one, Mitchum is the extraordinarily creepy bad guy, and Gregory Peck the hero. Polly Bergen is very good as the hero’s wife. 
Clint Eastwood is Secret Service officer Frank Horrigan and Fred Thompson is his boss (Harry Sargeant) in the highly suspenseful In The Line Of Fire (1993). John Malkovich is at his bizarre best as the determined assassin, and Eastwood is compelling as a discredited agent. The plot is a bit of a stretch, but just go with it. The white-knuckle confrontation is riveting. 
In Secretariat (2010) Fred Thompson appears as Bull Hancock, owner of Kentucky’s Claiborne Farms, and like most of the characters in this film, a real person. He helped Secretariat’s owner Penny Chenery (Diane Lane) find a suitable trainer for the soon-to-be Triple Crown winner. 
All of the films (including nearly all the various versions of Law And Order) in this article are available on DVD and for streaming. All except Secretariat, which is okay for everybody, are for mature audiences.