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There are three rules for success in life: Attack, attack, attack. Admit nothing, deny everything. And always claim victory.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump is sticking to them to this day.

The original advice is given to the young Trump by the notorious New York lawyer Roy Cohn, as played by Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, in a controversial new biopic which is opening in cinemas across the US this weekend, with just 25 days to go until election day.

Pic: Mongrel Media/Everett/Shutterstock

.THE APPRENTICE, from left: Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, 2024. .. Mongrel Media / Courtesy Everett Collection.The Apprentice - 2024
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The Apprentice, starring Jeremy Strong (L) and Sebastian Stan is out in the US. Pic: Mongrel Media/Everett/Shutterstock

The movie’s release amounts to an unwelcome October surprise for Trump’s campaign. He is just the latest former US leader to fall foul of big screen incarnation.

Dan Snyder, a close billionaire friend of the former president, originally helped fund the film’s production with the expectation that it would depict Trump positively.

After seeing a finished cut he spoke to his lawyers in an attempt to stop its distribution.

Trump’s own legal team issued a cease and desist notice to stop the “marketing, distribution, and publication” of the movie.

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They were unsuccessful.

The Apprentice had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Pic: Mongrel Media/Everett/Shutterstock

The Apprentice - 2024
THE APPRENTICE, from left: Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, 2024. ph: Pief Weyman / © Mongrel Media / Courtesy Everett Collection

2024
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Sebastian Stan and Maria Bakalova as Donald and Ivana Trump in a scene from The Apprentice. Pic: Mongrel Media/Everett/Shutterstock

Donald Trump and Ivana Trump 1985. Pic: Adam Scull/PHOTOlink.net/MediaPunch /IPX/AP
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Donald Trump and Ivana Trump in 1985. Pic: Adam Scull/PHOTOlink.net/MediaPunch /IPX/AP

It pulled off its New York premiere in Manhattan last week after a Kickstarter fundraiser was set up to help “promote and defend the acclaimed Trump biopic that corporate America is scared to show you”.

Now it is going on commercial release in the US and Europe. It is out in the UK on 18 October.

The film’s producers insist that it is “a fair and balanced portrait of the former president” based on fact, as stated at the start of the film.

It opens without comment, playing archive footage of Richard M Nixon’s “I’m not a crook” speech and his claim that he never personally profited from public office. The implied comparison with Trump is unmissable.

President Richard Nixon speaks near Orlando, Fla. to the Associated Press Managing Editors annual meeting, Nov. 17, 1973. Nixon told the APME "I am not a crook." (AP Photo)
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In 1973 then president Richard Nixon told reporters ‘I am not a crook’. Pic: AP

The film covers “Donnie” as he starts out in his father’s property business in the 1970s and 1980s – before his political career and his time as the star of the long-running The Apprentice reality TV show.

It ends as Trump commissions the ghostwriter for his 1987 bestseller, The Art Of The Deal, and undergoes surgery for liposuction and baldness.

The portrait of the future president is intimate. Sebastian Stan brilliantly mimics many of the gestures and mannerisms which have become familiar to a global audience.

Donald Trump
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Donald Trump in New York’s Central Park in 1986. Pic: AP

Trump starts out as a soft, privileged, and highly ambitious young man.

He is shown going on to become a party to blackmail, corruption, attempts to swindle his siblings, and bankruptcy.

In a graphic scene, he rapes his first wife.

In her legal divorce deposition, Ivana did indeed accuse her husband of marital rape.

She recanted the claim years later insisting: “Donald and I are the best of friends and he would never rape me.”

Ivana, the mother of Don Jnr, Ivanka, and Eric Trump, died in 2022.

In this film, Trump is the apprentice tutored in corruption to win by Roy Cohn. Cohn persuades him that there is no such thing as “The truth”, only what you say it is.

Cohn was a well-known New York lawyer whose clients ranged from Trump, Rupert Murdoch and Andy Warhol to Mafia bosses.

Since his death in 1986, he has assumed almost legendary status in US literature as an evil manipulator.

Donald Trump makes his point. Pic: AP/Alex Brandon
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Trump’s legal team issued a cease and desist notice to try to halt the movie. Pic: AP/Alex Brandon

A closet homosexual who died of complications from AIDS, Cohn is a central character in the award-winning drama Angels In America and other fiction and non-fiction works.

Cohn began his career as a fierce anti-Communist prosecutor who worked alongside Richard Nixon and US Senator Joe McCarthy, who led the discredited anti-Communist witch hunts of the early 1950s.

Cohn used all means to ensure that both Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel, mother of two young children, went to the electric chair for spying.

At The Apprentice’s Manhattan after-party, Jeremy Strong told Vanity Fair: “Roy’s legacy is a legacy of shamelessness, mendacity, lies, dissimulation, brutality, and winning as the only moral measure.”

Strong is a method actor, best known as Kendall Roy in Succession, who likes to inhabit the parts he plays.

In Roy Cohn, he says he also found “a kind of guileless innocence and charm at the same time as he was a lethal, brutal, ruthless, savage, remorseless person”.

By the end of the film, Cohn is almost a pathetic character as Trump casts him off, partly in fear of his sickness, partly because of his advice “to slow down” making increasingly questionable “deals”.

Trump relents and throws a final birthday party for Cohn at Mar-a-Lago, spoilt by a thoroughly alienated Ivana telling him that the “solid gold” and diamond Trump cufflinks he’s been given are cheap fakes.

Meanwhile, the real estate tycoon completes his apprenticeship by stealing Cohn’s rules as his own for his book.

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Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris gestures as she speaks during a campaign event in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S., September 20, 2024. REUTERS/Jim Vondruska
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Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Pic: Reuters

Jeremy Strong, Sebastian Stan and Maria Bakalova turn in Oscar-worthy performances – although the Academy may not be in the mood to honour the film next spring if the man himself is voted back into the White House.

Whether friendly or hostile, presidential biopics typically do not do very well.

Neither Primary Colours in 1998 nor Reagan this year made back their production costs.

Primary Colours came out well into Bill Clinton’s second term, too late to damage his political career.

John Travolta’s portrayal of slippery Jack Stanton, a thinly disguised version of Clinton, and his “bimbo eruptions” did little for the president’s long-term reputation.

Dennis Quaid played President Ronald Reagan in a hagiography earlier this year.

Liz and Dick Cheney in Wyoming in 2022. Pic: AP
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Liz and Dick Cheney in Wyoming in 2022. Pic: AP

It fizzled at the box office, was panned by critics, and was quickly pulled from cinemas. It has not been released in the UK.

Reagan died 20 years ago but Facebook still restricted online advertising of the film this year in case it was seen as election interference for the Republicans.

The most successful recent biopic was the satire Vice in which Christian Bale piled on the prosthetic pounds to impersonate Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s vice president.

This year the real Dick Cheney, a staunch Republican who also served Nixon, has endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris over his own party’s candidate.

His daughter, former US congresswoman Liz Cheney, is leading the campaign against him inside the party.

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Unlike those movies, The Apprentice is going live just when Americans are deciding whether or not to vote for Trump.

What impact it will have is uncertain. One audience member at the US premiere thought it could help Trump win because “Sebastian Stan is attractive”.

The film’s Iranian-Danish director Ali Abassi says “it’s fun to be riding on the back of the dragon”.

The scriptwriter Gabriel Sherman hopes the film “makes people sit in a quiet, dark theatre and look with their own eyes at the behaviour of the man that we might elect to be the next president”.

Donald Trump may hate the film and denounce it. But the boastful mega-egotist so painstakingly captured in The Apprentice will nevertheless be upset, one suspects, if it fails to do business “bigly” at the box office.

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Russell Brand charged with rape and sexual assault

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Russell Brand charged with rape and sexual assault

Russell Brand has been charged with rape and two counts of sexual assault between 1999 and 2005.

The Metropolitan Police say the 50-year-old comedian, actor and author has also been charged with one count of oral rape and one count of indecent assault.

The charges relate to four women.

He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday 2 May.

Police have said Brand is accused of raping a woman in the Bournemouth area in 1999 and indecently assaulting a woman in the Westminster area of London in 2001.

He is also accused of orally raping and sexually assaulting a woman in Westminster in 2004.

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Ashna Hurynag discusses Russell Brand’s charges

The fourth charge alleges that a woman was sexually assaulted in Westminster between 2004 and 2005.

Police began investigating Brand, from Oxfordshire, in September 2023 after receiving a number of allegations.

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The comedian has denied the accusations and said he has “never engaged in non-consensual activity”.

He added in a video on X: “Of course, I am now going to have the opportunity to defend these charges in court, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

Metropolitan Police Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy, who is leading the investigation, said: “The women who have made reports continue to receive support from specially trained officers.

“The Met’s investigation remains open and detectives ask anyone who has been affected by this case, or anyone who has any information, to come forward and speak with police.”

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Tom Cruise leads moment of silence in tribute to ‘dear friend’ Val Kilmer

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Tom Cruise leads moment of silence in tribute to 'dear friend' Val Kilmer

Tom Cruise has paid tribute to Val Kilmer, wishing his Top Gun co-star “well on the next journey”.

Cruise, speaking at the CinemaCon film event in Las Vegas on Thursday, asked for a moment’s silence to reflect on the “wonderful” times shared with the star, whom he called a “dear friend”.

Kilmer, who died of pneumonia on Tuesday aged 65, rocketed to fame starring alongside Cruise in the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, playing Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky, a rival fighter pilot to Cruise’s character Maverick.

Tom Cruise, star of the upcoming film "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning," leads a moment of silence for late actor Val Kilmer during the Paramount Pictures presentation at CinemaCon at Caesars Palace on Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Tom Cruise said ‘I wish you well on the next journey’. Pic: AP

Val Kilmer in 2017. Pic: AP
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Val Kilmer in 2017. Pic: AP

His last part was a cameo role in the 2022 blockbuster sequel Top Gun: Maverick.

Cruise, on stage at Caesars Palace on Thursday, said: “I’d like to honour a dear friend of mine, Val Kilmer. I can’t tell you how much I admire his work, how grateful and honoured I was when he joined Top Gun and came back later for Top Gun: Maverick.

“I think it would be really nice if we could have a moment together because he loved movies and he gave a lot to all of us. Just kind of think about all the wonderful times that we had with him.

“I wish you well on the next journey.”

The moment of silence followed a string of tributes from Hollywood figures including Cher, Francis Ford Coppola, Antonio Banderas and Michelle Monaghan.

Kilmer’s daughter Mercedes told the New York Times on Wednesday that the actor had died from pneumonia.

Tom Cruise takes part in the Paramount Pictures presentation at CinemaCon at Caesars Palace on Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
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Tom Cruise at Caesars Palace on Thursday. Pic: AP

Diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, Kilmer discussed his illness and recovery in his 2020 memoir Your Huckleberry and Amazon Prime documentary Val.

He underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments for the disease and also had a tracheostomy which damaged his vocal cords and permanently gave him a raspy speaking voice.

Kilmer played Batman in the 1995 film Batman Forever and received critical acclaim for his portrayal of rock singer Jim Morrison in the 1991 movie The Doors.

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He also starred in True Romance and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as well as playing criminal Chris Shiherlis in Michael Mann’s 1995 movie Heat and Doc Holliday in the 1993 film Tombstone.

In 1988 he married British actress Joanne Whalley, whom he met while working on fantasy adventure Willow.

The couple had two children before divorcing in 1996.

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Bruce Springsteen: The Boss to release seven ‘lost’ albums

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Bruce Springsteen: The Boss to release seven 'lost' albums

Bruce Springsteen is to release seven albums of mostly unheard material this summer.

The US singer said the songs, written and re-recorded between 1983 and 2018, were being made public after he began completing “everything I had in my vault” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a short video posted on Instagram, Springsteen said the albums were “records that were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released”.

The 83-song collection is being released in a box set called Tracks II: The Lost Albums and goes on sale on 27 June.

Some 74 of the tracks have never been heard before.

Springsteen first teased the release on Wednesday morning with a short social media video accompanied by text which said: “What was lost has been found”.

Tracks II is the follow-up to the star’s first Tracks volume, a four-CD collection of 66 unreleased songs, released in 1998.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MARCH 26, 2025: Bruce Springsteen took the stage at Carnegie Hall for People Have the Power: A Celebration of Patti Smith, an electrifying tribute to the legendary artist. The event, presented by Michael Dorf, honored Smiths profound impact on music, poetry, and activism, bringing together an all-star lineup to perform her most iconic songs. (Photo: Giada Papini Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire). Photo by: Giada Papini Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
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Bruce Springsteen at New York’s Carnegie Hall at a tribute to Patti Smith last month. Pic: PA

The New Jersey-born rocker, nicknamed The Boss, last released a studio album in 2022.

Only the Strong Survive was a collection of covers, including songs by Motown and soul artists, such as the Four Tops, The Temptations, The Supremes, Frankie Wilson and Jimmy Ruffin.

The late soul legend Sam Moore, who died in January and was a frequent Springsteen collaborator, sang on two of the tracks.

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Springsteen is coming to the UK in May to launch a two-month tour of Europe with his E Street Band.

The shows will include performances at the Co-op Live in Manchester and Liverpool’s Anfield stadium.

The singer-songwriter has sold more than 140 million records since his debut on the music scene in 1973, according to his website.

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