Neeson To Be US President

Ballymena-born movie star Liam Neeson is being re-united with director Steven Spielberg (of Schindler's List fame) for a huge role - in the persona of iconic US President, Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln founded the US Republican party and also steered his country through a bitter civil war over slavery.
Born in 1809 Lincoln became the 16th president of the US, leading the country through the war and the Union victory over the Confederacy.
Confederate sympathiser and actor John Wilkes Booth sneaked into Lincoln's theatre box and shot the President dead during a performance of 'Our American Cousin'.
Dramatically, Lincoln had seen Booth two years before his bloody death in a performance of Charles Selby's play 'The Marble Heart' at the same theatre.
The President was in fact a regular theatregoer, but deciding to go to Ford's Theatre in Washington one week after the end of the war proved to be Lincoln's downfall.
Neeson, who has also just been picked as top judge at the Kerry Film Festival in November, said his research had been very 'hands on'.
"I spent a week down in Washington last June and I had access to this extraordinary Lincoln memorabilia," he said.
"I put my hand on the Bible that he was sworn-in on in 1860. I held his wallet that he died with," he explained.
(BMcC)