Walton Goggins Cast In Steven Spielberg's 'Lincoln'

It's "cool projects for former The Shield actors" day! We just heard that Michael Chiklis will be the bad guy in Taylor Hackford's Parker, and now Walton Goggins has been cast in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. He's the latest addition to a monster of a cast that begins with Daniel Day Lewis as the sixteenth President of the US and includes many more. We'll recap the cast after the break.

This is a great break for Walton Goggins, who has already done a lot of good work recently. He was one of the better aspects of Predators, he's got a role on Justified, and he's in Cowboys & Aliens. (And the Straw Dogs remake, but we can let that one go. And he might be good in it!) Lincoln could propel him to a whole new career stage, however. Deadline says he'll be "Ohio Congressman Wells A. Hutchins, a progressive Democrat who goes against his party and votes in favor of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery."

At the very least he'll be in excellent company. The cast includes: Sally Field, who'll play Mary Todd Lincoln; Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens; David Strathairn as Secretary of State William Seward; Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Todd Lincoln; and Hal Holbrook, James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, Bruce McGill and Joseph Cross, with David Costabile, Byron Jennings, Dakin Matthews, Boris McGiver, Gloria Reuben, Jeremy Strong, and David Warshofsky in smaller parts.

From the press release that announced the film back in November 2010:

Based on the best-selling book, Team of Rivals, by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, the screenplay has been written by the Pulitzer Prize winner, Tony Award winner, and Academy Award nominated writer Tony Kushner. It will be produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Steven Spielberg. It is anticipated that the film will focus on the political collision of Lincoln and the powerful men of his cabinet on the road to abolition and the end of the Civil War.