Hillary Clinton grudgingly enlisted Steven Spielberg at her husband's insistence for secret coaching lessons to improve her image on the campaign trail, but the former first lady junked the "likeability lessons" as the race heated up for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Best-selling conservative author Ed Klein discloses the sessions in his new book —
"Unlikeable: The Problem with Hillary" — which was excerpted Saturday in The New York Post.
"I get $250,000 to give a speech," according to a Clinton friend quoted in Klein's book, "and these Hollywood jackasses are going to tell me how to do it!"
However, former President Bill Clinton insisted, Klein wrote.
"Your policies and talking points are solid," he said. "You can use Charlotte [Chelsea's baby daughter] to emphasize how you’re all about women and children.
"Now, the challenge is to ¬repackage you in 2016 as a strong but loveable older woman — more Golda [Meir] than Maggie [Thatcher]."
Hillary then responded, "I’m not going to pretend to be somebody I’m not."
The sessions, according to Klein's book, included Clinton privately working with a cameraman in her home in the Whitehaven section of Washington, who took video of her facial expressions, hand gestures, voice pitch — even eye contact.
"She didn’t like the results she saw from the Whitehaven video sessions," Klein wrote.
In addition, Spielberg's people examined footage of Clinton's speeches.
They noted that "she looked irritated and bored" — though Clinton agreed to work on her facial expressions, which she insisted on doing herself, Klein said.
"Sometimes they’re helpful," she told friends of Spielberg's people, "but just as often, they’re full of s- -t."
Exasperated by the ordeal, Clinton quit the lessons.
"I decided I had enough with the camera and the recordings and the coaches," she told a friend, according to Klein. "I got so angry I knocked the f- -king camera off its tripod.
"That was the end of my Stanislavski period."
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