People

By Sara C. Medina

As a stand-up comedian just after the heyday of "Hey, hey, L.B.J." protests, Randy Quaid used to do a takeoff routine on Lyndon Johnson. "He was always some kind of buffoon figure for me when I was growing up," he acknowledges. But after being cast as the Texas politician in LBJ, an NBC-TV movie to air next season, Quaid immersed himself in research that included taped interviews with Lady Bird Johnson, who is played by Patti LuPone. "I came to have this immense respect for the man," fellow Texan Quaid, 35, says now. "I could identify very strongly with his needs, with what he wanted out of life -- a certain level of power, authority. He was relentless." Did the old stand-up routines interfere with his portrayal? "They were sketches," he says. "An artist will do a caricature in a few minutes. To do a full oil portrait takes time. I like to think LBJ is an oil portrait."