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September 26, 2015 | 8:43pm

NEWS EXCLUSIVE

Spielberg tried – and failed – tomake Hillary seem likeable

In his new book, “Unlikeable,” journalist Edward Klein unveils the lengths HillaryRodham Clinton’s campaign will go to avoid the mistakes of the 2008 race — whenObama famously said, “You’re likeable enough, Hillary.” In an exclusive excerpt to ThePost, Klein reveals how Bill Clinton reached out to a famous friend for help.

Hillary was taking lessons on how to be more likeable.

She was doing it for Bill, not for herself. It was all his idea.

One evening while they were having drinks with friends, he turned to Hillary and said,“Let’s ask Steven for help.”

Their old Hollywood buddy Steven Spielberg could supply Hillary with acting coaches tohelp her when she had to give a speech.

Hillary didn’t think she needed help.

“I get $250,000 to give a speech,” she said, according to one of her friends, “and theseHollywood jackasses are going to tell me how to do it!”

But Bill insisted.

“Your policies and talking points are solid,”he told her. “You can use Charlotte[Chelsea’s baby daughter] to emphasizehow you’re all about women and children.Now the challenge is to repackage you in2016 as a strong but loveable older woman— more Golda than Maggie.”

Hillary didn’t see the resemblance to GoldaMeir or Margaret Thatcher, and she said,“I’m not going to pretend to be somebodyI’m not.”

But she carried on with the likeabilitylessons anyway. Partly to please Bill. Butmostly to shut him up.

She hired an assistant to run a videocamera in the den of Whitehaven, her homein the fashionable Observatory Circleneighborhood of northwest Washington, DC. It was just the two of them, her and thecamera guy, who had to sign a confidentiality agreement so he couldn’t blab to thepress.

Later, after the recording session was over, she watched herself on the TV set. She sat inthe dark, dressed in a blue muumuu that she’d recently purchased online atAmazon.com, and scrutinized her facial expressions, her hand gestures, the pitch of hervoice, and her use of eye contact.

She told Bill she found the process tedious.

He said, “This could mean votes. Voters make decisions, even unconsciously, on howlikeable a politician looks.”

But it wasn’t only the tedium that bothered her. She didn’t like the results she saw fromthe Whitehaven video sessions.

For comparison, she screened videos that hadbeen recorded live by her people when she wason the road and gave one of her six-figurespeeches. From the collection of videos, sheselected the ones she liked and sent them off toSteven Spielberg’s office, with a reminder that

everyone involved in the project was sworn to secrecy.

Not that she had any reason to mistrust Steven. He’d always been more than generousto her. Spielberg let her use his corporate apartment in the Trump Tower on Manhattan’sFifth Avenue when she ran for a Senate seat from New York in 2000. Hillary felt right athome in the lavish surroundings, and she crashed at Spielberg’s pied-à-terre more than20 times.

Accustomed as she was to being treated like royalty, she asked the management ofTrump Tower to give her the exclusive use of one of its elevators. The management -refused. She had to share an elevator with the skyscraper’s other millionaire peons.

When the Hollywood coaches sent back their critiques of Hillary’s video sessions, theynoted that she looked irritated and bored.

Most times, after she glanced at the printout of their notes — she called them “notesfrom La-La Land” — she tossed them in the wastepaper basket.

There was one thing about the process that she thought was worthwhile: working onher facial expressions.

If she got the facial expressions right, she believed the rest would fall into place. But asshe pointed out to friends, she could just as easily work on her facial expressions in frontof the bathroom mirror without having some Hollywood schmuck tell her what she wasdoing right or wrong.

“Sometimes they’re helpful,” she told the friends, “but just as often they’re full of s- -t.”

A couple of weeks after Hillary began her likeability lessons, she invited several womenfriends to Whitehaven. When one of her friends noticed a video camera standing on atripod in a corner of the room, she asked Hillary what it was for.

“Speech practice,” Hillary said, according to the recollection of one of the women. “Mycoaches tell me I’m supposed to pretend when I speak. Pretend that I actually like theaudience. I’m supposed to force myself to keep a smile on my face. I’m supposed tothink happy thoughts. To think of Chelsea or Charlotte or my [late] mother. But not aboutBill, because even though I love him to death, he makes me tear my hair out.”

That got a laugh from the women.

But as the campaign heated up, one of the first casualties was the Spielberg likeabilitylessons.

Everyone agreed they weren’t working.

“For more than a decade, Mrs. Clinton has tried to swat away a persistent concernabout her ability to connect with voters,” noted The New York Times. “‘SaturdayNight Live’ recently captured that problem in a sketch featuring an actress playingMrs. Clinton, who said of herself at one point, ‘What a relatable laugh!’ Years of security-infused Bubble Wrap around her travels and a wealthy lifestyle have done little to pullMrs. Clinton closer to voters.”

“Given that [Hillary] has been in public life since 1992, it’s a bit incongruous to considerthat her speaking style is often so lacking,” wrote The Washington Post. “She has yet tomaster ‘the big speech,’ which is part of the toolbox of any major politician.”

When Hillary spoke in public, she still had trouble making eye contact with her audience.Her eyes wandered from the text of her speech or her talking points to some unfocusedspot on the ceiling and back again. Her voice was flat and uninflected.

In exasperation, Hillary quit taking the likeability lessons.

“I decided I had enough with the camera and the recordings and the coaches,” Hillarytold a friend. “I got so angry I knocked the f- -king camera off its tripod. That was the endof my Stanislavski period.”

Excerpted from “Unlikeable: The Problem with Hillary” by Edward Klein. Out this weekfrom Regnery Publishing.

FILED UNDER BARACK OBAMA , BILL CLINTON , BOOKS , DEMOCRATS , HILLARY CLINTON ,

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION , STEVEN SPIELBERG , 9/26/15

Only Trump understands how angry the average American is

By Edward Klein

NY Post compositeSaving Private Rodham

Bill Clinton along with Hillary Clintoncongratulates Steven Spielberg afterawarding him with the 1999 National Medal ofArts and Humanities Award.AFP/Getty Images

“Hillary was takinglessons on how to bemore likeable.”

Bill Clinton had his Hollywood pal Steven Spielberg supply Hillary Rodham Clinton with actingcoaches to critique her campaigning performances, according to Edward Klein.WireImage

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