Daniel Day-Lewis Is Abraham Lincoln in Spielberg's “Team of Rivals”

When casting the Great Emancipator, the first person you talk to has to be the man famed for playing some of film history's great sociopaths, men like Daniel Plainview and Bill "The Butcher" Cutting.

Daniel Day-Lewis will play Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's "Team of Rivals," based on the book of the same name by Pulitzer Prize-winning plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin and adapted for the screen by Tony-winner Tony Kushner.

“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," said Steven Spielberg via press release on Dreamworks' website. "I am grateful and inspired that our paths will finally cross with Lincoln.”

DDL has been nominated for Best Actor four times, having won twice. Mark our words, he will be 3-for-5 by the time this project is over, as there is no way the Academy will be able to resist the site of one of the greatest actors of this generation playing our 16th president.

The film will likely focus on Lincoln's relationship with the powerful men he selected to his cabinet--William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates-- and his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton.

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