Actor and politician with heart and soul

When we think of Marc Baum, and of course we did in the run-up to this portrait, Shakespeare somehow comes to mind: all the world's a stage, and all men and women mere players. Baum's world is actually a double stage, as he is both a politician and an actor, although we are not sure whether Baum is an acting politician or a politicised actor: he is probably a mixture of both.

In the past, Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others, have shown that you can also make it in politics as an actor, having made it to US president and governor of California respectively, while Ukraine is currently even being led by a former actor, with President Selensky having acted as the Ukrainian president in a satirical TV series. People like to say that politicians are often just acting anyway.