J. Edgar Hoover is a 1987 American biographical drama television film written and directed by Robert L. Collins. It stars Treat Williams as the eponymous J. Edgar Hoover, the long-serving (1924 - 1972) Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The film is based on the 1979 book The Bureau: My 30 Years in Hoover's FBI by William C. Sullivan and William S. Brown, and dramatizes key points in Hoover's life between the time he joined the U.S. Justice Department in 1919 and his death in May 1972. It aired on Showtime on January 11, 1987.