Jackie Earle Haley Will Add Thin, Creepy Element to 'Lincoln'
Realizing that his Abraham Lincoln film clearly needed an insane-looking gaunt presence, Steven Spielberg has added our newest Freddy Krueger, Jackie Earle Haley, to the cast of Lincoln. Haley will play Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States during the U.S. Civil War and originator of a popular riot grrrl hairstyle that probably involved barrettes. Deadline tells me Stephens is best remembered for a speech he gave in which he said slavery was the "natural condition of blacks and the cornerstone of the Confederacy," which was a pretty rough thing to say even back then, let alone now, post-Shaq. He'll be going up against Daniel Day-Lewis's Abraham Lincoln, who I suspect will be at odds with the whole "natural condition" of slavery thing. The film will shoot this fall and is scheduled for a release purposely after the 2012 elections, because, as Spielberg himself said, "I didn't want it to become political fodder." Otherwise, everyone would probably just vote for Lincoln again.
