David Strathairn Signs on for LINCOLN Film

According to the Hollywood Reporter, David Strathairn is set to join previously announced Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field in the film version of "Team of Rivals," based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of Abraham Lincoln. Steven Spielberg will direct the film titled, "Lincoln," featuring a screenplay by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner. Strathairn will play Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward.

The movie will focus on Lincoln and his cabinet as they struggle with the abolishment of slavery and try to find and end to the Civil War. The film is scheduled to begin filming in the fall of 2011, with an expected release in the fall of 2012.

Strathairn played Stanley in two consecutive New York Classic Stage Company (CSC) productions of Pinter's 1957 play The Birthday Party, directed by Carey Perloff. He played the dual roles of prison Officer and Prisoner in Pinter's 1989 play Mountain Language and Edwin Booth in a workshop production also featuring Angela Goethals of Booth: A House Divided by W. Stuart McDowell at The Players in 1989. He also starred as Kerner, in Tom Stoppard's Hapgood (1994); and Devlin, opposite Lindsay Duncan's Rebecca, in Pinter's 1996 two-hander Ashes to Ashes in the 1999 New York premiere by the Roundabout Theatre Company.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos