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| Daniel Day Lewis as "Honest Abe" |
Steven Spielberg is finishing the year off on a high with two new releases, War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin, but he’s got even higher hopes for 2012 when he finally unveils the biopic Lincoln, which delves into the life and times of one of our most famous and beloved chief execs, Abraham Lincoln.
Double Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis finally green-lighted his participation after years of back and forth – for a long time Liam Neeson was tied to the role – and Spielberg couldn’t be more thrilled. They’re currently on location in Virginia shooting the project.
“I’m so excited to work with one of the greatest actors of our time,” Spielberg told the Chicago Sun-Times last week.
“He wouldn’t say yes for years. He even turned me down seven years ago when I asked him to play Lincoln. I think he was intimidated. You think about playing Lincoln, and it’s true that he was too great a man.”
Day-Lewis, the Irish citizen and resident of Co. Wicklow who won one of his two golden statuettes portraying the Irish writer and painter Christy Brown in My Left Foot, was sold on Spielberg’s movie when he saw the script that the award-winning writer Tony Kushner crafted.
“Daniel had never read his script. When he did read it, he understood the man,” Spielberg said.
Though Lincoln was born and raised in Illinois, Spielberg chose Virginia for the shoot because the film will focus on the last year of his presidency. Some photos have leaked from the set featuring Day-Lewis as the spitting image of old Abe.
Expect to see Lincoln after next year’s race for the White House ends . . . just in time for Oscar season.
"Lincoln needs his own wide berth," he said. "And he wouldn't be given a wide berth with both sides using him as a kind of political football,” Spielberg told ABC last week.
3 Comments
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.warlocks | Dec 23, 2011, 01:50 AM EST
I Wonder if the Movie about Lincoln will tell the real truth about him being a closet Atheist. His wife said after his death. my Husband was not Religious or a real Christian even though he read the Bible often.He had his doubts about a Jesus being a God !
colkelley | Dec 22, 2011, 10:31 AM EST
These people OBVIOUSLY know very little about the "real" Lincoln who told racist jokes, whose "Master Plan" was to colonize ALL Black Americans back to Africa, who committed at least three direct violations of the Constitution, who ordered the arrest of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (for ruling Lincoln's suspension of the Writ of Habeus Corpus unconstitutional), who offered to the South to continue slavery until 1900...etc., etc. Only people who limit themselves to the "Cult of St. Abraham" continue to hold the uneducated view that Lincoln fought a war to end slavery (he did not) or that he ended slavery (the "Emancipation Proclamation" left slavery in Union slaveholding states, areas of the confederacy controlled by Union forces and the entire Confederate state of Tennessee "...as if this Proclamation had never been issued). These folks are smart enough not to believe in Santa Claus but believe even more fantastical lies about Lincoln without questioning reality.
mcdolan | Dec 22, 2011, 10:21 AM EST
Looking forward to this!