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We've seen a few photos of Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln on the set of of Steven Spielberg's historical film project Linclon. Today, thanks to Entertainment Weekly we bring you your first official look of the actor as the 16th President of the United States, and he looks fantastic!
The movie is based on the novel Team of Rivals, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Tony Kushner wrote the script for the film, which will focus on the political collision of Lincoln and the powerful men of his cabinet on the road to abolition and the end of the Civil War.
Regarding the photo above, Spielberg said that Day-Lewis...
...captures not just the likeness of the 16th U.S. president, but also the intangible, pensive quality that made him a great leader. Lincoln had a very, very complicated – and at the same time, extremely clear — inner life. He thought things out. He talked things out. He argued both sides of every issue. And he was very careful in making any decision. As a matter of fact, his opponents and his enemies criticized him often for being impossibly slow to a decision.”
The movie will only focus on the last four months of Abraham Lincoln’s life. It won't be a battlefield movie, there will be battles in it, but it's really a movie about the great work Abraham Lincoln did in the last months of his life. Spielberg goes on to explain,
Our movie is really about a working leader who must make tough decisions and get things done in the face of overwhelming opposition. Lincoln’s realization that the Emancipation Proclamation, the thing he is most known for, was simply a war powers act that would easily be struck down by any number of lawyers after the cessation of hostilities after the Civil War. He needed to abolish slavery by constitutional measure — and that’s where we start.
The director also reveals in the interview that everyone called Day-Lewis Mr. President on the set and that he called all of the actors by their characters' names saying, "That was something I felt was important to establish a little authenticity, maybe even more for me than for them.”
The movie has an incredible cast of actors that includes Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Hal Holbrook, James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, Bruce McGill, Joseph Cross, David Costabile, Byron Jennings, Dakin Matthews, Boris McGiver, Gloria Reuben, Jeremy Strong, David Warshofsky, David Strathairn, Walton Goggins, Lee Pace, Jackie Earle Haley, David Oyelowo, and Jared Harris.
