US:He is known to millions as New York district attorney Arthur Branch in the TV series Law & Order and as Rear Admiral Joshua Painter in The Hunt for Red October, but actor Fred Thompson may now be heading for his biggest role yet - as president of the United States.
A Gallup-USA Today survey puts Mr Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee, in third place for the Republican nomination, behind John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. A poll of likely Republican voters in the Iowa caucus, the first contest in next year's primary season, also puts him in the top three.
The actor, who first came to public prominence as a lawyer on the Senate Watergate Committee in the early 1970s, says he is thinking about a presidential run but has yet to make up his mind.
In recent weeks, however, conservatives who are suspicious of Mr McCain and Mr Giuliani, have started to look seriously at Mr Thompson, who has a solidly conservative record as well as celebrity appeal.
Republicans have chosen actors for high office in the past, notably Ronald Reagan as president and Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California. If Mr Thompson decides to run, US networks may be obliged to stop broadcasting re-runs of Law & Order to comply with the "equal time rule" for candidates.
California channels stopped running Mr Schwarzenegger's films during his two campaigns in California and US viewers were spared re-runs of Bedtime for Bonzo during Mr Reagan's campaigns.
"Fred has the knowledge and expertise on the issues that matter most in today's world," his website says.
The buzz around Mr Thompson may owe much, however, to the failure of other leading Republican candidates to catch fire, a fact that is likely to be reflected in poor fundraising figures when the results for the first quarter are revealed next week.