The role Daniel Day-Lewis called a “disturbing privilege”
Not many actors carry the burden of representing history on their shoulders, but for Daniel Day-Lewis, it’s a responsibility he’s become familiar with. After starring in Gandhi, The Crucible and There Will Be Blood, Day-Lewis has morphed into the many famous figures throughout his career and shown the complexities of people that have shaped our world. Using the ‘method’ approach in his performances, Day-Lewis is a creative shape-shifter, lending himself to a carefully cultivated body of work that reflects his unique passion and commitment to storytelling.
However, there was one role that was particularly challenging for Day-Lewis due to the pressure of portraying a monumentally significant real-life figure, the former president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.
It took Steven Spielberg 12 years to adapt the story of Lincoln’s life for the silver screen, with a sprawling story that is both political and personal. And it took half of that time for Spielberg to convince Day-Lewis to take the role of the former president, who only agreed to take on the part because fellow actor Leonardo DiCaprio had called him to convince him to take the part, and that he’d only do it if he had a year to research and get into character. While Spielberg was reluctant to wait this long, he agreed, knowing the actor was crucial to the film’s success.
But Day-Lewis had been reluctant to take on the role due to the sheer size and importance of this figure, feeling an immense pressure to honestly depict a person who hadn’t been captured on screen and with little audio-visual material to study or ways of knowing what the president was like in real life, it meant that most of his performance would be solely his interpretation of history, which is, an enormous undertaking.
Lincoln follows Abraham Lincoln throughout his final term in office and the few months leading up to his passing of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States. However, the story is also a blend of his personal and political life, with Spielberg wanting to celebrate his contributions to history but also not sugar coat his personal failings and mistakes.
When asked about the pressure to portray this figure, Day-Lewis said, “It’s a disturbing privilege. And for that very reason, I was extremely shy about taking on this wonderful task… I’m not keen on history being tampered with to a great extent, or any extent really, and I felt with this man particularly, that it might just be impossible to find the life in him that would help tell this story. And I hope to goodness that people that do see this film will not feel that this part of their history, which is so vital, has been misrepresented.”
Despite the enormity of the task, Day-Lewis was undoubtedly successful in this goal, creating a complex portrait of a tumultuous and pivotal period with American history, showing the life and legacy of a mysterious historical figure that is rarely seen on screen. Day-Lewis owes much of the success of the project to the highly collaborative relationship between him and Spielberg, working closely together to bring this slice of history to life.
