Dominic Cooper To Play Abe Lincoln’s Mentor

The part of Abe Lincoln’s mentor Henry Sturges, has gone to British rising star Dominic Cooper. Last week, Joaquin Phoenix was reported to be the front-runner for the role but it seems that he passed, or that director Timur Bekmambetov wanted a lesser-known star.

While it would’ve been cool to see Joaquin return with a mainstream flick, Dominic Cooper is an actor who’s able to take on various genre roles. His turn as the bratty rocker in ‘Tamara Drew’ was amusing and at the same time endearing, but it was his most recent part that caught the eye of the major studios which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

In Lee Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double the young actor played dual roles as Uday Hussein and Latif Yahia, who was forced into being Uday’s body double and have plastic surgery. The film plays as a new type of gangster film that shows how Saddam’s son was a raging psychopath that tortured and raped young women, killed people without warning, and treated people as play things for his own amusement.

Joining Benjamin Walker as Abe Lincoln, Cooper will play Henry “a mythic, ageless figure who turns Lincoln into an axe-throwing expert slayer of vampires”. This summer, Cooper can also be seen in a supporting role in Marvel Studios and Paramount’s ‘Captain America: The First Avenger‘.

Anthony Mackie has also joined the cast as Will, Lincoln’s best friend. Mackie appeared in the Oscar winning ‘The Hurt Locker’ and will be seen next month in ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ and in the upcoming Robot boxing flick ‘Real Steel‘.

As for the female leads, Australian actress Robin McLeavy is reported to be playing Lincoln’s love-interest and future wife Mary Todd Lincoln. Vampire Hunter will be director Bekmambetov’s first movie since making the James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie  bullet curving action flick ‘Wanted’. Tim Burton is producing from a script by the author Seth Grahame-Smith.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is set for release in 3D June 22, 2012.

UPDATE:

Mary Elizabeth Winstead has now been cast as Mary Todd in this vampire adventure. She’s also starring in the upcoming ‘The Thing’ prequel which comes out this October.

via: THR