Daniel Day-Lewis prepares for role as Abraham Lincoln

Daniel Day-Lewis has been preparing for his role as Abraham Lincoln in Steve Spielberg's planned 2012 blockbuster by visiting the state where the former president began his political career.

Day-Lewis will star in the movie based on the book "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin, who joined Day-Lewis on his tour in Illinois. They visited the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, the Lincoln Home and the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln served as a legislator and and the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices.

Kathleen Kennedy, who is co-producing the film with Spielberg, said: “We just came in for a quick peek. All of us were very moved by seeing some of the historial artefacts.".

Dave Blanchette, a spokesman for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, said Day-Lewis spent a lot of time in the House of Representatives chamber in the Old Capitol. “He got up on the dais and said, ‘This is a very intimate setting, you can really see everybody in the room when you’re speaking from here,’” Blanchette said. “It was obvious he was trying to get a sense for what Lincoln might have seen when he spoke and gave his ‘House Divided’ speech.”

However, when the group toured the portion of the presidential museum dedicated to Lincoln’s years in the White House, Day-Lewis stopped short of the rooms that depict Lincoln’s assassination and funeral. “The producers went in, but he didn’t,” Blanchette recalled. “He said, ‘I’m portraying Lincoln alive and I choose not to go any farther.’”

According to a press release from DreamWorks Studios, “Lincoln” is to 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.”

Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire, a history of Britain's involvement in the civil war, believes that casting a Briton as the national hero could cause offence. "I think people are going to be upset. We're talking about one of the most famous presidents in America's history... There'll be much agony about this. Selling the idea to the American public that there was no American actor who could play Lincoln will be hard."

But even the original contender was not an American. When the director first signed the project to Dreamworks in 2001, Irishman Liam Neeson was pencilled in to play the part. But four months ago Neeson withdrew from the project, saying he was, at 58, already two years older than Lincoln was when he was assassinated.

Day-Lewis, 53, who has two Oscars, for My Left Foot and There Will Be Blood, is a superb alternative.Spielberg said in a statement: "Daniel Day-Lewis would have always been counted as one of the greatest of actors, were he from the silent era, the golden age of film or even some time in cinema's distant future. I am grateful and inspired that our paths will finally cross with Lincoln."

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