Actor, lawyer, senator, and even presidential candidate.  This guy did a lot of cool things.  He died yesterday at the age of 73 in Nashville.

I first noticed him way back during the Watergate hearings in 1974.  Back then, when there was a congressional investigation, Congress was smart enough to hire lawyers to ask the questions and get information, rather than ask the questions themselves. A young Roy Cohn asked the questions for McCarthy.  And so on.  Thompson was Watergate council for the Republicans back then, and he was interested in getting to the truth — not covering Nixon’s ass.

The leap from lawyer to actor was relatively simple.  In 1977 Mr. Thompson found himself representing the whistle-blower in one of Tennessee’s biggest political scandals. In her role as a parole administrator, Marie Ragghianti refused to release inmates granted pardons after paying then-Gov. Ray Blanton. Mr. Thompson successfully represented Ragghianti in a wrongful termination case, helping her win a settlement and a return to her job in 1978.

That case eventually became the subject of a book and launched Mr. Thompson’s acting career. Mr. Thompson played himself in the 1985 version of the movie “Marie.” Critics praised his performance, and more roles soon followed.

Five years later, Mr. Thompson had roles in three of the biggest films of 1990: “Days of Thunder,” “The Hunt for Red October” and “Die Hard 2.”  He also enjoyed a five-year run on NBC’s “Law and Order” as District Attorney Arthur Branch from 2002-2007.

Though he took a break to run for the Republican nomination for president in 2008.  Failing that, he returned to acting, including the role of Judge Noose in a Broadway production of “A Time To Kill”.