Charlie Wilson's War 2007 film. Starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ned Beatty. Directed by Mike Nichols (Universal Pictures) Charlie Wilson: Biography Used by permission from Biography.com

Charlie Wilson was a congressman from Texas who took in hot tub sessions with cocaine-sniffing strippers while helping bring down the Soviet empire.

At least that's the skinny on him for the new film Charlie Wilson's War, starring Tom Hanks.

But does the real Charlie Wilson live up to the movie's hype?

Charles Wilson was born June 1, 1933, in the small town of Trinity, Texas. He attended public schools there and graduated from Trinity High School in 1951.

While attending Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, Wilson was appointed to the United States Naval Academy. He received a B.S. degree, graduating eighth from the bottom of his class in 1956.

From 1956 to 1960, Wilson served in the U.S. Navy, attaining the rank of lieutenant. Having graduated as a gunnery office, he was assigned to a destroyer that searched for Soviet submarines. He then took a top secret post the Pentagon as part of an intelligence unit that evaluated the Soviet Union's nuclear forces.

Wilson stumbled into politics by volunteering for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1960. After a 30-day leave from the Navy, he entered his name into the race for Texas State Representative from his home district. While back on duty, his mother, sister and their friends went door to door campaigning. It worked. And at age 27, he was sworn into office.

For the next dozen years, Wilson made a name for himself as the "liberal from Lufkin." He supported abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment. Wilson also battled for regulation of utilities, Medicaid, tax exemptions for the elderly and a minimum wage bill.

In 1972, Wilson was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the Second District of Texas, taking office the following January.

By this time, Wilson had picked up the nickname "Good Time Charlie" for his notorious personal life. He staffed his office with young, tall and attractive women who were dubbed "Charlie's Angels" by other members of Congress.

Wilson rarely spoke on the House floor and was never associated with any of the great legislative issues of his day. He angered colleagues like Pat Schroeder, a Colorado Democrat, by calling her "Babycakes," later admitting he had been a "reckless and rowdy public servant'' at times.

But beneath it all was a fervent anti-Communist and deeply ambitious politician, as revealed in George Crile's 2003 book Charlie Wilson's War. And Wilson eventually found his destiny, becoming the secret patron of what was then the largest covert operation in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Wilson claimed that as a news junkie, he read an Associated Press dispatch in the early summer of 1980 that described hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Afghanistan, occupied by the Soviet empire.

And in 1986, then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani from the Southern District of New York, on the hunt for white collar crime, investigated Wilson and his secretarties for allegedly snorting cocaine at a hot-tub party in Las Vegas.

When the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan in February 1989, Wilson was invited to celebrate at the C.I.A.'s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. On a large movie screen in an auditorium flashed a huge quotation from Pakistan's president, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq: "Charlie did it."

The Soviet Union collapsed two years later. However, the American-financed war against the Soviets in Afghanistan also helped create a political vacuum filled by the Taliban and Islamic extremists, who turned their deadly terrorism back against the United States in 2001.

Wilson retired from Congress in 1997 after serving 24 years.