Daniel Day-Lewis discusses ‘Lincoln’ in a crowded theater with Spielberg, O’Reilly and Oprah By Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News | The Lookout – 22 hrs ago

Time editor Rick Stengel, Daniel Day-Lewis and Steven Spielberg (Yahoo/Dylan Stableford)

In person, Daniel Day-Lewis looks almost nothing like Abraham Lincoln. (He looks something like an English soccer player.) On screen, though, Daniel Day-Lewis looks--and possibly sounds--almost exactly like Abraham Lincoln.

"It's lucky for me that no one can say positively what he sounded like," said Day-Lewis on Thursday in New York, following Time magazine's packed VIP screening of Steven Spielberg's Oscar-baiting "Lincoln" biopic.

The 55-year-old London-born actor said he spent a year trying to get into the 16th president's head.
"If you approach Lincoln head on, it's like a child in front of a monument," Day-Lewis said. "You have to come at him from an angle—behind his left shoulder."

"I try not to dismember a character--a life--into its component parts," he continued. "Because the voice is such a deep personal reflection of character, I leave it alone. If I'm very lucky I begin to hear a voice--not supernatural--but it's a powerful moment. Thank God it did happen in this case. I began to hear a voice as I drew closer to the man." (While filming, Day-Lewis would even send text messages as Lincoln to Sally Field, who played Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd.)

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