Scrubs actress signs up to play First Lady in Oliver Stone’s Bush biopic

Oliver Stone's biopic of President George Bush is taking shape. Elizabeth Banks, one of the busiest actresses in Hollywood right now, has been signed up to star alongside Josh Brolin as loving first lady Laura Bush in W. Having graduated through bit parts in Sex and the City, Seabiscuit and Scrubs to a starring role in Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri make a Porno, she is now playing a woman nearly twice her age: Banks (above left) is a glamorous 34-year-old, whereas the First Lady will be 62 later this year.
 
Fittingly for a film directed by America's great conspiracy theorist, with a reputation for being loose with the facts, there have been countless suggestions as to how Stone (above right) intends to rub salt into Bush's wounded legacy.  In JFK, he implicated many of Washington’s top politicians in John F Kennedy's murder. Nixon also welded truth with fiction.
 
During a recent interview, Stone said: "I see George Bush as a synthetic person... He's an ex-alcoholic who believes in Jesus. What could be more dangerous!" But he added: "I'm a dramatist who is interested in people, and I have empathy for Bush as a human being." Bush isn't the only world leader in Stone's sights: last year he received tentative permission from Iran to make a film about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. ·