Actors in the political game? Enough said; EVEN OUR VERY OWN ALUN FFRED HAS BEEN AT IT.

Byline: ian PARRI

I'VE long had misgivings about the world of film getting mixed up with politics. Not to mention vice versa. After all, wasn't former US president Ronald Reagan, the one-time B-movie actor who was support to a chimpanzee in Bedtime For Bonzo, enough of a warning of the perils of mixing two such volatile trades?

It's said that the poor old chimp tried to play down the whole affair for years afterwards. Well, would you own up to it in front of your mates over a jungle juice in the Bunch of Bananas?

We've also had Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Glenda Jackson and Vanessa Redgrave as actors in the political game, to name just four. Enough said. It'd send a shiver down even Christopher Lee's chilling spine.

Of course there was Michael Caine's portrayal of the last apartheid-era president of South Africa, F W de Klerk, in the 1997 film Mandela and de Klerk, complete with comic Cockney parody of the Cape Town accent. Not a lot of people know that, Nelson.

Actress Grace Kelly became Princess Grace in 1956 when she married Prince Rainier, then head honcho of the Grimaldi dynasty and the unelected autocrat in sole charge of the Monaco tax haven. Hollywood star Frank Sinatra was believed to have equally close links with the mafia as he had with the White House.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il is said to have produced his own films, starring, no doubt, a couple of combine harvesters and a mushroom cloud.

And our own heritage minister Alun Ffred Jones has his fingerprints all over plenty of celluloid. The most successful effort was probably the S4C football sitcom C'mon Midffild, which he co-scripted and produced, and its TV movies spin-offs.

But it was heartening to hear how Welsh actor Christian Bale at the last minute pulled out of a deal with producer Oliver Stone to portray George W Bush in a film called "W", doubtless pronounced as Dubya.

Apparently the Pembrokeshire heart-throb, star of The Dark Knight, told Stone he didn't feel he could do the job. He might have been terrified of being typecast as a bumbling buffoon. Or perhaps he just didn't fancy the pre-filming lobotomy.

CAPTION(S):

Arnold Schwarzenegger has appeared alongside Glenda Jackson, Clint Eastwood and Vanessa Redgrave in the political arena; Following the script.. Alun Ffred