Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton is an actor, born 1947.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, born in Chicago in 1947, is a lawyer, politician and diplomat whose entry in a media catalogue is unusual, because nearly everything in it is either footage of her or written by her. She was first lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001 as the wife of Bill Clinton, a senator for New York from 2001 to 2009, and the 67th secretary of state under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013. In 2016 she became the first woman nominated for president by a major American party and the only woman to win the national popular vote for the office, losing the electoral college to Donald Trump. She is the only first lady to have run for or held elected office herself.
The screen credits follow from all that rather than from any performing career. She appears as archive footage in documentaries about American systems and American arguments: incarceration in 13th, health insurance in Sicko, cyberwarfare in Zero Days, the internet's political undertow in HyperNormalisation and Feels Good Man. Where she appears live it is usually a talk show, including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis.
The books are the substantial part of the catalogue: It Takes A Village, Living History, Hard Choices and the political thriller State of Terror. Her one entertainment-industry award is a Grammy, for an audiobook narration.
Movies (21)
- HyperNormalisation (2016)
- 13th (2016)
- Saturday Night Live: The Best of Amy Poehler (2009)
- Sicko (2007)
- Crazy, Not Insane (2020)
- Zero Days (2016)
- Feels Good Man (2020)
- Beyond Boundaries: The Harvey Weinstein Scandal (2018)
- Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens (2007)
- Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018)
- Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy (2021)
- Shine a Light (2008)
- The Words That Built America (2017)
- The Concert for New York City (2001)
- The Red Pill (2016)
- 14 Women (2007)
- The House I Live In (2012)
- Inequality for All (2013)
- Two Men at War (2022)
- All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone (2016)
- Miracle Rising: South Africa (2013)
TV (20)
- The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2015)
- Frontline (1983)
- 60 Minutes (1968)
- American Masters (1986)
- Anderson Cooper 360° (2003)
- My Big Fat Fabulous Life (2015)
- Face The Nation (1954)
- Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War (2024)
- History 101 (2020)
- Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis (2008)
- The Nineties (2017)
- The Problem with Jon Stewart (2021)
- Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj (2018)
- In Vogue: The 90s (2024)
- This Week (1981)
- I Am Cait (2015)
- Nightline (1980)
- Race for the White House (2016)
- Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror (2021)
- First Ladies (2020)
Books (4)
Where to start with Hillary Clinton
The books are the primary source, so begin there. Living history is her own account of the White House years, Hard choices covers the State Department, and It Takes A Village is the earlier argument about children and public policy that gave American politics a slogan to fight over for a decade. State of Terror is the outlier and the most purely enjoyable, a political thriller written by somebody who has actually sat in the rooms it describes.
On screen, treat the documentaries as history of a period rather than as portraits of her. 13th is the essential one, a rigorous film about American incarceration in which she appears as part of the record. Sicko and HyperNormalisation use her the same way from very different directions. Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis is the one credit where she performs rather than merely appears, and it is genuinely funny.