Daniel Day-Lewis explains the inspiration for his Lincoln voice

The LINCOLN trailer has been a topic of debate amongst movie fans primarily for the choices that Daniel Day-Lewis took with the voice for the 16th President. At a recent Q&A in New York, Day-Lewis was directly asked about the voice and his reasons were quite interesting.

He explained “You begin with the places that would have made a huge difference in his life. Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, and the counties that he came from. There are some early recordings, but no contemporary recordings — lucky for me, so no one can say positively that it’s not what he sounded like…And beyond that, I suppose it really was just an act of imagination.”

I was definitely taken aback by his voice but each time I see the trailer it doesn’t catch me as odd anymore. It is interesting that whenever we imagine our great historical figures from before the ability to record audio we assume they sounded like William Wallace or Leonidas. But, if Viggo Mortensen can lead the armies of Middle Earth without a bass voice, I can deal with LINCOLN sounding like this.

Day-Lewis took an entire year to prepare himself for the role of LINCOLN which keeps with his widely reported work ethic. My personal favorite role of his career is in GANGS OF NEW YORK, which as you can see above (thanks Derek237!) has a nice connection with the upcoming Spielberg film.

LINCOLN opens everywhere on November 9th.