HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Everyone needed a hero. They got two. One is a massive, chestnut-colored horse, known to his friends and family as Big Red. Everyone else will call him Secretariat. The other, a self-described Denver housewife, is less recognized, but she is as gallant and charismatic as her steed. Her name is Penny Chenery Tweedy, and her faith in this horse will galvanize the nation, revolutionize horse racing and, ultimately, change her life’s course entirely.
Based on the remarkable true story, Secretariat chronicles the spectacular journey of the 1973 Triple Crown winner. Housewife and mother Penny Chenery Tweedy (Diane Lane) agrees to take over her ailing father’s Virginia-based Meadow Stables, despite her lack of horse-racing experience. Against all odds, with the help of veteran trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich), she manages to navigate the male-dominated business, ultimately fostering the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years and what may be the greatest racehorse of all time.
Secretariat also stars Dylan Walsh as Jack Tweedy, Penny’s very traditional and highly skeptical husband; Dylan Baker as Chenery’s brother; Margo Martindale as Chenery’s assistant; Nelsan Ellis as Secretariat’s groom; and real-life jockey Otto Thorwarth as Secretariat’s jockey, Ron Turcotte. The film features James Cromwell as Ogden Phipps, a wealthy financier and an integral figure in the racing community in the ’70s; Fred Dalton Thompson as Bull Hancock, owner of Claiborne Farms; Kevin Connolly and Eric Lange, as reporters who initially recognize Secretariat’s potential; Scott Glenn as Penny’s father; and AJ Michalka as her daughter Kate.
“The story is about heart — Secretariat’s and the heart of the woman who owned him. Both were greater than anyone imagined,” says director Randall Wallace, who is the Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated screenwriter of the global hit Braveheart. “I believe that when Secretariat was running the last of his races, he was no longer running against other horses; he was running for the joy in becoming who he was meant to be.”
Filmmakers tried not to veer from the facts of the story, but Wallace makes clear that he didn’t want to make a documentary account of Chenery’s life. “I have worked on many historical subjects as a filmmaker and I have a saying: Let’s not let the facts get in the way of the truth. The way I see that is, in making a movie, you are making an impressionistic painting. You are choosing which facts to highlight and which facts to omit. Inevitably, by making that choice, you are writing a story from the stark facts of journalism to the vivid majesty of myth. So in this story, what people are going to feel is the deeper truth of what Secretariat and Penny accomplished.”
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