Blair has 'actor' looks - Estevez

Kevin Young
BBC News

Estevez wrote and directed Bobby, which is about a senator's murder

Prime Minister Tony Blair has the looks to be a film star should he ever wish to appear in a movie, Hollywood actor and director Emilio Estevez says.

The Brat Pack idol - in London to promote his film about the 1968 death of US senator Robert Kennedy - said Mr Blair was "certainly photogenic".

Estevez's father Martin Sheen played the US president in The West Wing.

And it was definitely possible for politicians to make the switch to acting, Estevez added.

Former Republican senator Fred Dalton Thompson had been "very authentic" in TV drama Law and Order, he said.

The 64-year-old from Tennessee was "wonderful" in the show, he added, in response to a question from the BBC News website at a London Film Festival press conference.

What was obvious to Europeans years ago is now becoming painfully obviously in the United States, and I think it took us a while to come around Emilio Estevez

Estevez also claimed some US voters were now more willing to challenge their government.

"Americans are probably more in line than ever before. We're more moderate than we are liberal or conservative.

"However, people are afraid to speak out against the government [but] it's getting less and less so now."

There was a feeling that the Bush administration was "not all it was cracked up to be", he suggested.

"What was obvious to Europeans years ago is now becoming painfully obviously in the United States, and I think it took us a while to come around, unfortunately, so people are speaking out."

Tony Blair is to step down as prime minister by September

The 44-year-old star of Young Guns and The Breakfast Club has cast his former fiancée, Demi Moore, alongside his father in Bobby.

The movie also stars Christian Slater and Sir Anthony Hopkins and is being screened at the festival.

Estevez, who wrote and directed Bobby, said it was his intention to explore the lives of the ordinary people who were present when Kennedy was killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, 38 years ago.

"The politics should come out of the characters in a subtle way, rather than a ham-fisted one," he explained.

Mr Blair is thought to have idolised John F Kennedy during his early years as Labour leader and famously gave close confidant Peter Mandelson the nickname "Bobby".