Presidential zeal hits cinemas

The latest spate of films about the life and times of Abraham Lincoln, starring the likes of Sally Field and Daniel Day Lewis, proves the former American president still fascinates.

In this photo provided by the Library of Congress, President Abraham Lincoln, seated and holding his spectacles and a pencil on Feb. 5, 1865. (AP Photo/Library of Congress/Alexander Gardner)
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The two-time Oscar winner Sally Field will play Abraham Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln in a forthcoming film about the 16th American president, DreamWorks announced recently.

Field won the first of her Best Actress Oscars in 1979 for Norma Rae and again in 1985 for Places in the Heart. In signing up for the Lincoln role she joins a production with increasingly impressive credentials.

Daniel Day Lewis (himself a double Oscar winner) has already been cast as Lincoln, Steven Spielberg will direct the biopic and the script has been written by the Academy-nominated scriptwriter Tony Kushner. The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, a book that charts Lincoln's rise to power and examines the president's relationship with the men who formed his diverse cabinet as they worked towards abolishing slavery and bringing an end to the American Civil War.

With filming due to begin in the autumn, the movie is expected to be released late next year. On a more immediate note, The Conspirator, another Abraham Lincoln-related movie has just been released in the United States. Directed by Robert Redford, the courtroom drama starring James McAvoy and Robin Wright tells the story of Mary Surratt, the sole woman (along with seven men) to be arrested and implicated in Lincoln's assassination.