With lensing underway for a couple of weeks now on Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar,” it looks like the director is still filling in bits and pieces of his cast as he goes along.
Jeffrey Donovan, star of the USA network series “Burn Notice,” tweeted today (via Collider): “I fly to LA Sunday. I have been [cast] as Bobby Kennedy opposite LD in HOOVER. excited. working with Mr Eastwood again. Dreams come true.” Again? Yep, the actor also appeared in the helmer’s 2008 film “Changeling” and it looks like the old timer has taken a shine to the actor.
We don’t imagine the role or appearance will be too significant in the film, but Kennedy did work with J. Edgar Hoover in battling organized crime when he was Attorney General. The two also butted heads over Martin Luther King, with Hoover uncovering alleged communist ties between the civil rights leader and some of his supporters; Kennedy urged King to drop contact with those persons. Later, Hoover got approval to tap King’s phones for a limited time but ended up extending the clearance, digging deeper into King’s life than Kennedy had permitted. Later, on the presidential campaign trailer, Kennedy’s policies would shake up those inside and outside Washington with Hoover’s “lover” Clyde Tolson reportedly saying, “I hope that someone shoots and kills the son of a bitch.”
Donovan will join a stellar cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio in the titular role with “The Social Network” breakout star Armie Hammer playing Hoover’s assistant/closeted lover Clyde Tolson; Josh Lucas as famed aviator Charles Lindbergh; Ed Westwick as Agent Smith, an operative gifted with writing skills; Damon Herriman as Bruno Hauptmann, the man convicted of kidnapping and killing the Lindbergh baby; Judi Dench as Hoover’s mom; Naomi Watts as Helen Gandy, a Justice Department file clerk who ended up being Hoover’s personal secretary; Ken Howard as lawyer and jurist Harlan F. Stone and Stephen Root as Arthur Koehler, a wood specialist at Forest Product Laboratories, who uses his expertise to help Hoover investigate the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby by tracing the origins of the ladder used by the perpetrator.
“J. Edgar” is expected in theaters this fall.
