Stephen Spielberg has been working on a big budget movie about Lincoln for several years now that’s evidently been consigned to development Purgatory. Liam Neeson and Sally Fields were attached as Abe and Mary for several years but both have since pulled out (apparently they were paid for an option of several years but it lapsed and neither was interested in renewing).
Personally I never liked the idea of Neeson anyway- he’s a great actor and he has the height but he’s too beefy for Lincoln and he has too deep and distinguished a voice. Lincoln was wiry and tough but at his best slim and at his worst painfully thin and his voice was unanimously described as high pitched, all wrong for an orator and possessed of an extremely thick western (today “midwestern”) country accent that he sometimes exaggerated for effect- basically you could never portray his real voice as its described without people thinking you were mocking him, but at least you shouldn’t give him Neeson’s booming stage voice.
Also I personally wouldn’t do a movie on Lincoln as he’s far too complex. Even if you take just the Civil War years you couldn’t do justice without a miniseries. Unfortunately Stephen Spielberg has yet to take my advice on his film projects and frankly I think that’s why he hasn’t gone further. (Speaking of miniseries I thought Sam Waterston acted the part excellently in the 1980s Gore Vidal miniseries except that he lacked the height to be physically convincing, Lincoln’s 6’4 being like a man of at least 6’6 today; I thought Mary Tyler Moore overacted the hell out of Mary Todd, showing the manic madness of the woman but never the pathos and humanity.)
Anyway, my choices, and feel free to cast any role you wish other than just Lincoln himself for characters you’d see in a Lincoln flick:
Tim Robbins: he has the height, he can do the voice (or as close as most film producers would let you get), you can believe him as somebody who is glad to let you think he’s a rube but is really a genius and a man whose coarse and ribald sense of humor masks a very dark contemplative soul. Of key importance though Robbins does not get any kind of script approval or editorial control (not that he doesn’t have talent but he’s way too left wing and politically vocal and the last thing you want in a Lincoln piece is an actor with passionate political opinions).
If Robbins won’t contain himself, then Jeff Daniels, who’s also very good indeed at his best, can do broad comedy and drama, and is very tall and not particularly good looking.
I wish Jon Hamm or Tom Hanks (a distant relative- George Clooney’s a much closer relative but that would be like mistaking a Corvette for a Buick Skylark) were taller as with some makeup they’d be perfect, but c’est la vie.
Two actors who got excellent reviews for stage portrayals of Lincoln are Fred Gwynne (Herman Munster, Judge Haller) who played the role opposite Kate Mulgrew as Mary, and- the harder one to believe- Richard Moll (Bull from Night Court) whose touring production of The Lincoln/Douglas Debates was praised including by critics who expected it to be terrible.
Mary Todd is a bit harder to cast with today’s crop of actresses who could convincingly play 40 something bipolar women. She was not a conventional beauty by today’s standards- she was very petite in her youth (5’0 to 5’2) and a bit chubby by the White House years. Anyone know of any actress who’s simultaneously short, round, and has the acting chops to play a histrionic “Madame Hellcat” without being cartoonish and showing the humanity?
(A white Octavia Spencer [who’s got the acting talent in droves and the right size] would be incredible but I don’t think they’d let you cast her as is for Mary; ditto a younger Patrika Darbo, but she’s a few years too old for the role now.)
