Everyone from Will Smith to Drake has been angling to play President Obama on the silver screen, but it looks like the first crack at a big role playing POTUS will go to a relative unknown.

Actor Parker Sawyers, perhaps best known for his turn as “Interrogator on Monitor” in “Zero Dark Thirty” will play a young Obama in the upcoming “Southside With You” opposite “Get On Up” star Tika Sumpter as his love interest, one Michelle Robinson, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The movie centers on the origins of the Obamas’ union — that fateful summer of 1989 when the two young lawyers met and began dating.

Sawyers might need a little assist in the makeup chair to really pull off playing the future president. As Smith put it once, the role really just boils down to two things: “It’s all about the ears.”

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The headline pretty much wrote itself. On Thursday, actor James Franco — he of the movie that almost wasn’t and that horrible Oscar hosting gig that sadly was — wrote a love letter (published by PostEverything) to burger giant McDonald’s where he worked briefly as a teenage struggling actor-slash-college dropout.

[Franco: McDonald’s was there for me when no one else was]

“All I know is that when I needed McDonald’s, McDonald’s was there for me. When no one else was,” wrote Franco, who swiped fries and frozen apple pies for all of three months before booking a Super Bowl commercial and hitting the big leagues.

“I was treated fairly well at McDonald’s,” continued Franco. “If anything, they cut me slack. And, just like their food, the job was more available there than anywhere else. When I was hungry for work, they fed the need.”

McDonald’s is currently trying to shore up a recent sales slump by cutting $300 million in costs. Franco doesn’t know how the company’s new strategy teamed with the recent push by fast-food employees to raise the minimum wage will affect jobs, but he wants everyone to know he was grateful for his brief trimester at Fast Food U.

If you had closed your eyes and just listened to the snapping sounds of cameras during a Senate hearing on global health issues Wednesday, you might have thought you were on a red carpet and not a stately flag-ringed room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building with a bunch of guys in bad suits.

The media scrum was there for Elton John, the panel’s star witness. Let’s hope they enjoyed the moment, because it could be a while before something like it happens again — fewer celebrities are taking the mike on Capitol Hill these days.

Aside from actor-vist Ben Affleck’s appearance at another Senate appropriations hearing in March, you might say we’re in a drought.

The lack of star factor isn’t lost on the Hill’s denizens, from reporters to staffers looking to impress their friends with those “look-who-I-bumped-into-at-work” selfies. “It used to be be that you could count on at least one a week,” lamented one photographer as he waited for Elton.

[RELATED: Cause Celeb: Elton John on AIDS funding]

What’s with the dearth of tabloid-worthy witnesses? Blame the Republican majority.

“We’re listening to the American people and acting on their priorities, which means fewer celebrity photo-ops and more legislation,” says Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

So you’re unlikely to see the likes of, say, comedian Stephen Colbert, who testified before a Dem-led panel in 2010 (about immigration reform. Really?). Or Seth Rogan cracking jokes while championing Alzheimer’s disease research, like he did last year, or — going back to 2007 —folk singer Jewel talking about disadvantaged youth.

Recall that it was a House committee led by Republicans that rebuffed Affleck last year, apparently deeming him underqualified to testify about Congo.

Some Dems point out that it’s not just that Republicans don’t want Hollywood imports weighing in on the people’s business — it’s that many movie stars and musicians just aren’t into them, either. “Republicans don’t necessarily have those connections,” says one former Democratic House staffer.

But that’s not to say that Republicans have declared the Hill an absolute no-fly-zone for celebs. “We still enjoy a bit of Hollywood glamour to brighten our days every now and again,” Steel says.

Shakespeare Theatre artistic director Michael Kahn is finally heeding the Bard’s command to “get thee a good husband” (appropriately, that’s from “All’s Well That Ends Well,” natch) and tying the knot with his partner, New York-based interior designer Charles Mitchem.

“I love the look on people’s faces when I say I’m getting married,” Kahn tells us. After all, at 77, he’s an unusual groom. So why now? “Well, I’m not pregnant, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “We just decided it seemed like the right thing to do.”

The couple will wed at the Anderson House in Dupont Circle on May 17. Of course, it will be a fun crowd (ever been on a dance floor with theater people?), plus Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is officiating.

One would think that a guy who routinely oversees massive productions wouldn’t sweat at throwing together a little wedding, but Kahn said preparations for the big day have been surprisingly nerve-wracking. “I now have a huge appreciation for mothers of the bride,” he said.

No honeymoon right away; Mitchem, 44, has to be back at work in NYC, where the couple has an apartment.

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Ripping his plot straight from the headlines (and every single society grand dame’s nightmares), Austrian actor Christoph Waltz will direct and star in the film, “The Worst Marriage in Georgetown.”

The true crime story is based on the murder of Washington socialite Viola Drath, who was killed in her Georgetown rowhouse by her much younger husband, Albrecht Muth, in 2011. Muth, a native of Germany, will be played by Waltz, who won his first Oscar in 2010 for “Inglourious Basterds,” and his second for 2013’s “Django Unchained.”

[RELATED: “Albrecht Muth sentenced to 50 years in 2011 slaying of his socialite wife, Viola Drath“]

The movie will be centered on Muth who in 2014 was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 50 years in prison for brutally beating and strangling his 91-year-old wife. News reports consistently describe Muth as a social climber and something of a con man. He’d assumed the role of a U.S. Army officer, a German spy and even an Iraqi general. The cinematic version of his and Drath’s tragic marriage has a whiff of “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

“The Worst Marriage in Georgetown” is adapted from a 2012 New York Times magazine article of the same name. Production on the movie begins in October, according to Variety, but there’s no word if film trucks will be returning to the scene of the crime and clogging up the tony streets in Georgetown.