Former Sen. Fred Thompson, actor and politician, is dead at 73

Fred Thompson, whose career wove back and forth between law and acting and politics, died on Sunday. He was 73, and his family said the cause was a recurrence of lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system Thompson fought into remission in 2004. "It is with a heavy heart and a deep sense of grief that we share the passing of our brother, father, and grandfather who died peacefully in Nashville," his family said in a statement.

Thompson was perhaps best known for his performance on NBC's Law & Order, and his roles in at least 20 Hollywood movies — including The Hunt for Red October, In the Line of Fire, Cape Fear, and Days of Thunder. He also ran for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, after serving in the U.S. Senate from 1994 to 2002. But he first made his mark on the national stage when, as a 30-year-old assistant U.S. Attorney in Nashville, he was tapped to serve as minority counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee. His tough questioning of President Richard Nixon's aide Alexander Butterfield led to the breakthrough revelation that Nixon used a recording device to tape conversations in the Oval Office.

Thompson's acting career began after he caught a break and exceeded expectations. In 1985, the producers of the 1985 Sissy Spacek film Marie asked Thompson to play himself, the lawyer of Marie Ragghianti, in the story of Ragghianti winning back her job as head of the Tennessee Board of Pardons and Paroles after she was fired for exposing a parole-for-cash scheme that ultimately brought down Tennessee's governor.

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Thompson was born in 1942, in Sheffield, Alabama, but grew up in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, a star athlete and son of a used car dealer. "Fred was the same man on the floor of the Senate, the movie studio, or the town square of Lawrenceburg," his family said in a statement. He was married twice, and leaves behind four children; a fifth child, Elizabeth Thompson Panici, died in 2002 after an accidental prescription drug overdose. You can get a brief synopsis of his life in the AP video below. Peter Weber