[7][8] In addition to Whitaker, the film's all-star cast features Oprah Winfrey, Mariah Carey, John Cusack, Nelsan Ellis, Jane Fonda, Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Minka Kelly, Elijah Kelley, Lenny Kravitz, James Marsden, David Oyelowo, Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Rickman, Liev Schreiber, Robin Williams and Clarence Williams III.

Born and raised on a cotton plantation in Macon, Georgia, to sharecroppers, in 1926, when he was seven, the owner rapes his mother Hattie; his father Earl confronts him and is killed.

White House maître d'hôtel Freddie Fallows introduces him to head butler Carter Wilson and co-worker James Holloway.

Louis joins the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), activist James Lawson's student program, which leads to a nonviolent sit-in at a segregated diner, where he is arrested.

Louis participates in the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, where dogs and water cannons are used to stop the marchers, an action that inspires Kennedy to deliver a national address proposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In the late 1960s, after civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Louis tells his family that he has joined the Black Panthers.

When the Black Panthers resort to violence, Louis leaves the organization and returns to college, earning his master's degree in political science and eventually running for a seat in Congress, although Cecil continues to resent him.

Two months, two weeks and one day later, Cecil prepares to meet the newly inaugurated President, wearing the articles that he received from Kennedy and Johnson.

Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson are depicted in archival footage.

[21][22] Melissa Leo and Orlando Eric Street were cast as First Lady Mamie Eisenhower and Barack Obama, respectively, but did not appear in the finished film.

[26][27] The project received initial backing in early 2011 when producers Laura Ziskin and Pam Williams approached Sheila Johnson for help financing the film.

[9][30] The case was subsequently resolved with the MPAA granting The Weinstein Company permission to add Lee Daniels in front of the title, under the condition that his name was "75% the size of The Butler".

The site's consensus says: "Gut-wrenching and emotionally affecting, Lee Daniels' The Butler overcomes an uneven narrative thanks to strong performances from an all-star cast.

[42] Rolling Stone also spoke highly of Whitaker, writing that his "reflective, powerfully understated performance...fills this flawed film with potency and purpose".

[43] USA Today gave the film three stars out of four, and noted, "It's inspiring and filled with fine performances, but the insistently swelling musical score and melodramatic moments seem calculated and undercut a powerful story".

[45] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times was more negative: "An ambitious and overdue attempt to create a Hollywood-style epic around the experience of black Americans in general and the civil rights movement in particular, it undercuts itself by hitting its points squarely on the nose with a 9-pound hammer.

[47][48][49][50] President Barack Obama said, "I teared up thinking about not just the butlers who worked here in the White House, but an entire generation of people who were talented and skilled.

While Alan Rickman's performance generated positive reviews, conservative activists criticized the director and screenwriters of the film for depicting Reagan as indifferent to civil rights and his reluctance to associate with the White House's Black employees during his presidency.

"[55][56] Paul Kengor, one of President Reagan's biographers, also attacked the film, saying, "I've talked to many White House staff, cooks, housekeepers, doctors, and Secret Service over the years.