Fred Dalton Thompson was born in Sheffield, Alabama, to Ruth Bradley and Fletcher Thompson, a used-car dealer. Fred had a very normal upbringing and attended public schools in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee.
In 1959, at the age of seventeen, he married Sarah Elizabeth Lindsey at which point the couple lived in public housing. In 1964, after attending Florence State College and Memphis State University, Fred earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy and political science. Fred was a key player in the committee that investigated the Watergate scandal which brought the direct downfall of President Richard Nixon. His voice has been immortalized in the recordings of the Watergate proceedings when he asked the question, "Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?"
After Thompson took on a Tennessee Parole Board in 1977 in the case that ultimately toppled Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton from power on charges of selling pardons, the scandal became the subject of a book and a movie titled Marie. The 1985 movie actually featured Fred playing himself in the movie to give it more plausibility.
After twenty-five years of marriage, Fred and Sarah divorced in 1985.
After his appearance in Marie, Fred Thompson went on to star in several feature films including No Way Out, starring Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman; The Hunt for Red October, with Sean Connery; Cape Fear, with Nick Nolte, Robert De Niro, Jessica Lange; and In the Line of Fire, which was based on a psychopath who was around at the time of the killing John F Kennedy. In that movie Fred starred along side such greats as Clint Eastwood, Rene Russo, and Dylan McDermott.
When talking about Fred Thompson, it is difficult to keep focused on just one of his very successful careers, either that of an attorney, a politician, or of an actor. From being admitted to the Tennessee Bar Association in 1967 and entering into the practice of law, to beginning his eighteen year engagement as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., in 1975, and eventually becoming a senator in 1994, Fred’s resume is very interesting and varied.
In the final months of his U.S. Senate term in 2002, Fred joined the cast of the long-running NBC television series Law & Order, playing the character Arthur Branch.Thompson has also made occasional appearances on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and appeared in the pilot episode of Conviction. He is one of very few actors who plays the same regular character on two different series simultaneously.
In his personal life Fred has suffered the loss of one of his four children from his first marriage, Elizabeth Thompson on January 30, 2002, from a drug overdose. He is now married to Jeri Kehn whom he made his second wife on June 29, 2002. The couple have two children together, a daughter, Hayden, born in October 2003, and a second child born in November 2006.
In 2005 Thompson was appointed to an informal position by President George W Bush to help guide the nomination of John Roberts through United States Senate confirmation. He also is the chair of the International Security Advisory Board, a bipartisan advisory panel that reports to the secretary of state and focuses on emerging strategic threats. More recently Fred Thompson lent moral and financial support to Scooter Libby while he was on trial for his role in the Plame affair, serving on the advisory board of Libby's defense fund that had taken in 3.5 million USD as of February 9, 2007.
It was widely expected that Fred Thompson would announce his intention to run for president in 2008 and was spurred on by the results of polls in March 2007, which revealed that he was ahead of U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton with 44 percent to Clinton's 43 percent.
On September 5th 2007, in true Hollywood style, Fred Thompson announced his decision to run for US President in 2008 on the Jay Leno Show. He started his 'late' run for president by appearing in Iowa on September 6th 2007.
YUDDY
