The Butler (full title Lee Daniels' The Butler) is a 2013 American historical fiction drama film directed by Lee Daniels and written by Danny Strong. Loosely based on the real life of Eugene Allen, the film stars Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, an African-American who eyewitnesses notable events of the 20th century during his 34-year tenure serving as a White House butler. It was the last film produced by Laura Ziskin, who died in 2011.

The film was theatrically released by The Weinstein Company on August 16, 2013, to mostly positive reviews[11][12] and was a sleeper hit at the box office; grossing over $167 million worldwide against a budget of $30 million.

Cast

Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, the film's main character, who dedicates his life to becoming a professional domestic worker. Aml Ameen portrays a young Cecil.

Gaines' private life

Oprah Winfrey as Gloria Gaines, Cecil's wife.
David Oyelowo as Louis Gaines, the Gaineses' eldest and most volatile son.
Elijah Kelley as Charlie Gaines, the Gaineses' youngest son.
David Banner as Earl Gaines, Cecil's father, who is killed by Thomas Westfall.
Mariah Carey as Hattie Pearl, Cecil's mother.
Terrence Howard as Howard, the Gaineses' neighbor who romantically pursues Gloria.
Adriane Lenox as Gina
Yaya DaCosta as Carol Hammie, Louis's girlfriend.
Alex Pettyfer as Thomas Westfall,[6] the temperamental plantation owner who kills Earl after Earl protests Westfall's raping Cecil's mother.
Vanessa Redgrave as Annabeth Westfall, an elderly cotton farm caretaker who makes Cecil a house servant following the death of his father.
Clarence Williams III as Maynard, an elderly man who mentors a young Cecil and introduces him to his profession.

White House co-workers

Cuba Gooding, Jr. as Carter Wilson, the fast-talking head butler at the White House who becomes a longtime friend of Cecil's.
Lenny Kravitz as James Holloway, a co-worker butler and friend of Cecil's at the White House.
Colman Domingo as Freddie Fallows, the White House maitre d' who hires Cecil.

White House historical figures

Robin Williams as Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States.
James DuMont as Sherman Adams, Eisenhower's White House Chief of Staff.
Robert Aberdeen as Herbert Brownell, Jr., Eisenhower's Attorney General.
James Marsden as John F. Kennedy, the 35th President.
Minka Kelly as First Lady Jackie Kennedy.
Liev Schreiber as Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th President.
John Cusack as Richard Nixon, the 37th President.
Alex Manette as H. R. Haldeman, Nixon's White House Chief of Staff.
Colin Walker as John Ehrlichman, Nixon's White House Counsel.
Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan, the 40th President.
Jane Fonda as First Lady Nancy Reagan.
Stephen Rider as Stephen W. Rochon, Barack Obama's White House Chief Usher.

Civil rights historical figures

Nelsan Ellis as Martin Luther King, Jr..
Jesse Williams as civil rights activist James Lawson.
Danny Strong, the film's screenwriter, makes a cameo appearance as one of the Freedom Riders who are attacked in Alabama.

Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson are depicted in archival footage. Melissa Leo and Orlando Eric Street were cast as First Lady Mamie Eisenhower and Barack Obama, respectively, but did not appear in the finished film.

SPOILER ALERT Plot

In 2009, an elderly Cecil Gaines recounts his life story, while waiting in the White House. Gaines was raised on a cotton plantation in the 1920s Macon, Georgia, by his sharecropping parents. One day, the farm's owner, Thomas Westfall, rapes Cecil's mother, Hattie Pearl. Cecil's father confronts Westfall, and is shot dead. Cecil is taken in by Annabeth Westfall, the estate's caretaker, who says, "he's going to be a 'House Nigger' now" and trains Cecil as a house servant.

In his teens, he leaves the plantation and his mother, who has been mute since the incident. One night, Cecil breaks into a hotel pastry shop and is, unexpectedly, hired. He learns advanced skills from the master servant, Maynard, who, after several years, recommends Cecil for a position in a Washington D.C. hotel. While working at the D.C. hotel, Cecil meets and marries Gloria, and the couple have two children: Louis and Charlie. In 1957, Cecil is hired by the White House during Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration. White House maître d' Freddie Fallows shows Cecil around, introducing him to head butler Carter Wilson and co-worker James Holloway. At the White House, Cecil witnesses Eisenhower's reluctance to use troops to enforce school desegregation in the South, then the President's resolve to uphold the law by racially integrating a high school in Little Rock.

The Gaines family celebrates Cecil's new occupation with their closest friends and neighbors, Howard and Gina. Louis, the eldest son, becomes a first generation university student at Fisk University in Tennessee, although Cecil feels that the South is too volatile; he wanted Louis to enroll at Howard University instead. Louis joins a student program led by Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) activist James Lawson, which leads to a nonviolent sit-in at a segregated diner, where he is arrested. Furious, Cecil confronts Louis for disobeying him. Gloria, suffering from her husband's long working hours, descends into alcoholism and has an affair with the Gaineses' neighbor, Howard.

In 1961, after John F. Kennedy's election, Louis and a dozen others are attacked by the Ku Klux Klan while traveling on a bus in Alabama. Louis is shown participating in the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, where dogs and water cannons were used to stop the marchers, one of the movement's actions which inspired Kennedy to deliver a national address proposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Several months after the speech, Kennedy is assassinated. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, enacts the transformative legislation into law. As a goodwill gesture, Jackie Kennedy gives Cecil one of the former president's neckties before she leaves the White House.

Louis is later shown participating in the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement, which inspired President Johnson to demand that Congress enact a Voting Rights Act.

In the late 1960s, after civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, Louis visits and tells his family that he has joined the radical organization called the Black Panthers. Upset at his son's actions, Cecil orders Louis and his girlfriend, Carol, to leave his house. Louis is soon arrested and is bailed out by Carter Wilson. Cecil becomes aware of Richard Nixon's plans to suppress the movement.

The Gaineses' other son, Charlie, confides to Louis that he plans to join the Army in the war in Vietnam, to which Louis announces that he won't attend Charlie's funeral if he is killed there. A few months later, the Gaines family hold a funeral for Charlie, which Louis does not attend; his father is furious. However, when the Black Panthers begin to use violence in response to racial confrontations, Louis leaves the organization and returns to college, earning his master's degree in political science and eventually running for a seat in Congress.

Meanwhile, Cecil's professional reputation has grown to the point that in the 1980s, he and his wife are invited by Ronald and Nancy Reagan as guests at a state dinner . Cecil announces his resignation to the President, but not before gaining Reagan's support in his years-long effort to have the black White House staff receive the same rate of salary and career opportunities as their white counterparts.

Gloria, wanting Cecil to mend his estranged relationship with Louis, reveals to him that Louis told her that he loved and respected them both. Realizing his son's actions are heroic rather than antagonistic, Cecil joins Louis in a protest against South African apartheid.

The film then advances to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, where an elderly Gloria dies shortly before Obama is elected as the nation's first African-American president, a milestone which leaves Cecil and Louis in awe. The film ends with Cecil preparing to meet the inaugurated president in the White House.