Daniel Day-Lewis fears he’ll ‘desecrate’ greatest US leader

LOS ANGELES—“I would not wish to be the person that forever desecrated the best loved President this country has ever known,” Daniel Day-Lewis admitted in a recent interview, revealing his initial concern about playing Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.”

He need not worry. In a stunning performance, Daniel breathes life into America’s greatest leader, humanizes the stern-looking 16th President ingrained in our consciousness, no thanks to his famous white Georgia marble statue in Washington, DC, or his audio-animatronic version in Disneyland.

On the contrary, the actor’s Abe Lincoln—a man prone to telling humorous anecdotes even at the most critical moments during the Civil War—is bound to win more admirers for the Great Emancipator.

‘Best performance’

It’s Daniel’s best performance since his Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood.” It was understandable, though, for the London native to think really hard before he accepted the title role in the Tony Kushner-written drama set in Lincoln’s final months in office as the leader fiercely fought to end the Civil War and abolish slavery. Tommy Lee Jones (as Thaddeus Stevens) and Sally Field (Mary Todd Lincoln) are among the standouts in a brilliant cast.

“I was very anxious about making this decision [to play Lincoln],” Daniel confessed. The photos don’t do Daniel justice. He is a good-looking man, especially when he smiles—his whole face lights up, his soulful eyes glow. He has this winning habit of looking down when he laughs, like a boy bashful to be breaking into mirth.

“The will … the energy is going to have to come from [the actor]. But I’m also very aware of the broader sense of responsibility to the director, first and foremost, to my colleagues … I had to ask myself whether I could genuinely serve this story and serve Steven. I wasn’t sure if I could do that.”

Chuckling, Daniel candidly pointed out: “It seemed like an outlandish idea to take somebody who grew up in Southeast London and just make him the president of the United States. And not any old president …”

Daniel, who just donated the manuscripts of his late father, UK’s 1968 poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, to Oxford University, continued: “Lincoln seems so unapproachable to most of us, especially from the outside of this country. You feel that he has been mythologized to the point of irretrievability. As you approach him, he becomes so immediately accessible. It was in his character to be welcoming. He was very open. Humor was such a huge part of his life and character. That was one of the most beautiful discoveries for me in getting to know him. Discovering his humor allowed me to be playful in a more noticeable way than usual.”

We almost gasped upon seeing Daniel as Honest Abe for the first time in “Lincoln.” He brings soul and gravitas to the revered head of state, enhanced by hair and makeup which do not call attention to themselves at all, but look very much organic to the man. “I was quite honestly in complete denial about the whole makeup thing,” Daniel said, again laughing, his eyes downcast.

A shock

“It didn’t occur to me that I was going to need any makeup. It came as a bit of a shock,” he said. “I’ve always tried to avoid using makeup over the years. I used to love having it in the theater, but I try not to use it when I’m working on film. It felt to me as if that were going to be something of a burden and it didn’t turn out to be.”

He added: “It was probably an hour and a half in the chair every morning. By the time they would get it down to a fine art, they’d have really done wonderful work. The last thing you want is for people to ask about makeup because what you like is for it not to occur to anyone that there was any.”

Thus, he graciously cited the “incredible” makeup team. “Lois Burwell was the chief makeup artist. Her partner Kenny Myers and then Miia Kovero came to Ireland. We did our first makeup test [in LA]. This was probably a year before we shot the film. Then, during the course of that year, I got to know a little more of what I was looking for. They likewise had a better impression of what they were looking for. We did a third, if not fourth, test when we got to Virginia (the film’s location). We needed to do proper testing on camera as well.”

Lincoln as a father

Asked if he found similarities with Lincoln as he researched and played him, Daniel answered: “It would be preposterously arrogant to suggest that I had any similarities with that man. On a basic human level, I was able to understand very quickly and accurately his role as a father, the way in which he fathered his children. I feel that was connected in itself to many of the decisions he made.”

He continued: “Compassion is a thing that you see running through his entire life, both for human beings whoever they might be and for animals as well. He had a sense of empathy and compassion. I am not saying that I share those qualities to the same degree but I could recognize a corresponding element. And really that thing which I already mentioned—his humor was just so delicious for me to discover. The man we tend to see in all the images—in which he’s represented, especially in those magnificent photographs that (Alexander) Gardner took. Lincoln seems like a man so weighed down with responsibility that he looked so deeply serious, so impenetrably thoughtful. He was those things but he was also a man of incredible wit and humor.

Sense of sadness

About current President Barack Obama, Daniel was emphatic: “I personally find it obscene when people question the present president’s credentials as an American citizen. I find that disgusting.” Smiling, he remarked, “I aged just playing the president. You can see visibly how the president (Obama) has aged in devotion to his task in the last few years. My goodness, it’s enough for me to try and imagine that life. I’m not the person to actually do those things. No. I think actors should really stick to acting.”

In an earlier interview, Steven said that the last day of filming, when Daniel was shedding his Lincoln character and speaking in a British accent again, was one of the filmmaker’s saddest moments. “I was very sad as Steven was on the last day,” Daniel stressed. “Thank goodness, we did finish because we needed to finish. It was right that we finished when we did, but yes, there was a tremendous sense of sadness. There wasn’t a single day from the moment when I first threw my hat in the ring with Steven and Tony that I wasn’t grateful to be exploring that man’s life. I felt a tremendous sense of privilege to be allowed to do that. I grew to love him so much that I really didn’t want to part company.”

Laughing now, he said: “I really grew to love that man in a way that I never really thought you could love a person you never met.”

Loving Lincoln

He pointed out something else that becomes more difficult as filming ends: “Sometimes it’s suggested that the difficulty is exorcising the spirit of this or that character. It’s not that at all; it’s quite the opposite. It’s really one’s reluctance to let go [of a character] because, after all, one has invested a substantial amount of one’s life in exploring a character’s life, taken some trouble to try and create it, make it live. It’s a very strange thing that from one day to the next, it ceases just like that. It’s over but the beautiful thing in this case is that I can now go back to loving Lincoln from the other side of the line.”

Very available

Daniel gave a glimpse of his personal life when he talked about his sons. He has two with actress-writer-director Rebecca Miller, who’s the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller, and one with actress Isabelle Adjani. Chuckling again, Daniel revealed: “They didn’t even know what I did until a couple of years ago. My 14-year-old was asked what I did. He said, ‘I think he’s in construction.’ This was compounded by what he heard on the radio a couple of years later. He heard somebody say, ‘I think he makes chairs in his spare time.’ He thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard—that I was a chair maker.”

His face beaming with mirth, Daniel quipped: “I’m just a fellow who seems to be around all the time. I am very available.” And on occasions that he does leave the house, Daniel gifts the world with some of  the finest performances of our time.

E-mail the columnist at [email protected]. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepalesruben.

View comments

TAGS: Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis, Entertainment