Branagh to play FDR role

Actor Kenneth Branagh is stepping into a president’s shoes for a TV movie about the man who led America through the Second World War, it emerged today.

The Harry Potter star will play the role of Franklin D Roosevelt, who also steered his country to recovery after the Wall Street Crash.

The film, to be shown in the United States, will focus on the life of America’s 32nd President in the years before he entered the White House.

Production is due to begin in the autumn, and the film is expected to air early next year on the US channel HBO, according to the Hollywood Reporter newspaper.

Branagh has starred in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rabbit-Proof Fence and he appears in the forthcoming Mission: Impossible 3.

He has also directed and starred in Shakespeare screenplays, including Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing.

Coming to office in 1933, Roosevelt was credited with bringing economic recovery to the United States, as it was still reeling from the Wall Street Crash of October 1929.

He was diagnosed with polio in 1921 and the incurable disease paralysed both of his legs.

But he did not let the illness destroy his political ambitions, serving two terms as governor of New York and 12 years as president.

As the Second World War drew to a close, Roosevelt – commonly known as FDR - played a significant role in plans for the establishment of the United Nations.

But his health deteriorated, and on April 12, 1945, while at his home in Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a brain haemorrhage.