THE task of encapsulating the essence of Abraham Lincoln in a single film took Steven Spielberg roughly three times as long as it took the 16th US president to win the Civil War, abolish slavery and put the country on the course to recovery.

Creating such a historical epic may not compare to the colossal task of saving a bloodily divided nation.

But by Hollywood standards, Lincoln is as monumental as it gets, even for a couple of multiple Academy Award winners as Spielberg and the man he chose to play the president, Daniel Day-Lewis.

Born in Britain, Day-Lewis had to think about Lincoln not only as a towering historical figure, but also as a foreign statesman whose portrayal would be a sensitive matter for US audiences that revere the president.

"Because of the nature of the iconography surrounding his life and the extent to which he is mythologised and carved in stone, it's very difficult to imagine that one could ever approach him, to get close enough," Day-Lewis said in an interview.

"I was very shy about the idea of taking on this. Plus, I like working (in the US). I've been tremendously privileged in being able to work in this country over the years.

"The idea of desecrating the memory of the most beloved president this country has ever known was just kind of a fearful thing to me," said Day-Lewis, who earned Best Actor Oscars for My Left Foot and There Will Be Blood.

Spielberg had long considered a film about Lincoln but didn't want to tell the whole life story from the president's rail-splitting days as a youth to his assassination.

He also did not want to make a Civil War film loaded with grand battles or tell the story of a war through one man's eyes.

Spielberg already had done similar stories set in World War II with Schindler's List, the Holocaust saga that won him Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, and Saving Private Ryan, the combat epic that brought him his second directing trophy.

His approach began to coalesce in 1999 when he met historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who was in the early stages of writing her mammoth book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, a detailed chronicle of the unlikely alliances Lincoln formed with political opponents who initially considered him an unqualified upstart.

Her book traced the careers of Lincoln and his three competitors for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination and followed his White House years during the war through his assassination five years later.

The notion of a politician turning bitter rivals into supportersstruck Spielberg as the ideal way to present the spirit of Lincoln.

Spielberg acquired film rights to Goodwin's book when only a few chapters had been written.

As Goodwin laboured away on the writing, Spielberg had to condense what would become a 950-page account into a story that could play out on the screen in two and a half hours.

An early draft of the screenplay by playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America) ran to 550 pages.

"It was a mini-series, not a motion picture," Spielberg said.

"Brilliant pages, but certainly not a single motion picture or any practical motion picture.

"But from all of those pages, what stood out to me and really was shockingly apparent was almost the nexus of his entire existence as president, which was abolishing slavery by a constitutional amendment, the 13th Amendment. And that to me became the focus that I wanted to put all of our efforts into, telling that story.

"Because to see Lincoln at work, with his sleeves rolled up, with all the murky machinations of legislating a bill with a divided house not too dissimilar with what's happening today, and not too dissimilar to what was happening when we first sat down to tackle Doris' book."

Lincoln co-stars Sally Field as the president's forceful, high-strung wif, Mary Todd Lincoln and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as their oldest son.

Lincoln (M) is in Australian cinemas from today.

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