Neeson tipped for Lincoln role

Liam Neeson is in negotiations to take on the role of the United States' most revered president in Steven Spielberg's long-anticipated biopic of Abrah

16:25 13 January 2005

Liam Neeson is in negotiations to take on the role of the United States' most revered president in Steven Spielberg's long-anticipated biopic of Abraham Lincoln.

The Northern Irish actor starred in the director's Holocaust epic Schindler's List and is now rumoured to be the frontrunner to play the American Civil War premier.

Spielberg's company DreamWorks bought the rights to the as yet unpublished biography of Lincoln by Pulitzer prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in 2001.

But projects such as Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can have meant the adaptation of the book, The Uniter: The Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which is due to be published this autumn, has had to wait.

However, reports suggest that production on the film could begin as early as next January, after the director finishes his adaptation of HG Wells's The War of the Worlds, due out this summer.