When Samuel Chase's trial before the Senate opened on February 4, 1805, in the new capital of Washington, D.C., interest naturally focused on the principals in the forthcoming drama.

Lately he has been working not on heroes and monsters but on the creation of modern Middle Eastern neighborhoods for the director Peter Berg's forthcoming military drama "The Kingdom."

He also appears opposite Ben Affleck as the villainous Bullseye in the new comic-book thriller "Daredevil" and stars in Joel Schumacher's forthcoming drama "Phone Booth."

No show on television next fall will look more like the O. J. Simpson trial than ABC's forthcoming drama "Murder One."

But these telling central scenes reveal the soul of the film, which is part of a feast of recent and forthcoming political drama on television and film, in theater and books.

He has a cameo lined up in the forthcoming World War II drama "The Thin Red Line," which will be directed by Terrence Malick, whose film "Badlands" is one of the actor's favorites.

He may continue opening up his aesthetic with "His Greatness," a forthcoming three-character drama about the last days - there's death again - of a Southern playwright.