Henry Fonda and Raymond Massey played him. So did Walter Huston, John Carradine, Hal Holbrook and Jason Robards. And don’t forget F. Murray Abraham and Brendan Fraser.

But Daniel Day-Lewis is likely the only actor to don the stovepipe hat who also toured Abraham Lincoln’s Springfield, Ill., stomping grounds with a notable presidential historian.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of 2006’s best-selling “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” upon which Steven Spielberg’s new movie “Lincoln” is based, led the British actor through the Lincoln home in the Illinois capital, Lincoln’s law office there, and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

“I could tell even then he’d be incredible,” says Goodwin, a former Boca Raton winter resident. “He just absorbed it so fully, and afterwards he kept reading more about Lincoln. He’s on another planet compared to other actors.”

In the movie that opens Friday, the Oscar winner, playing opposite Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, accurately conveys the way Lincoln walked — “like a laborer,” Goodwin says — and the way he talked.

That initially jarring, high-pitched voice he uses in “Lincoln”? Judging from accounts by several of Lincoln’s contemporaries, “that was authentic,” Goodwin says. “A high-pitched voice, at that time, was a great advantage because they would talk outside to huge crowds of people, and it would carry all the way to the back.”

Spielberg and Day-Lewis also listened to WPA recordings of elderly Kentucky residents who would have shared a dialect with the Kentucky-born president. “That kind of authenticity is what they were after,” says Goodwin, whose insight and humor have made her a favorite guest of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central.

Spielberg, who expressed interest in optioning “Team of Rivals” well before Goodwin finished writing the book, gave the author a sneak preview of the film in August in his home theater.

“His wife Kate (Capshaw) was seeing it for the first time, too,” Good win says. “And Spielberg was in the house waiting to hear what we thought.”

What did Goodwin think? “I loved it. It’s an amazing, amazing movie.

“Between Spielberg’s direction and the (Tony Kushner) script and the set design and Daniel Day-Lewis’ miraculous performance, you feel like you’re watching Lincoln. Not like you’re watching a movie, but you feel like you’ve been catapulted back in time.”

Spielberg’s focus on Lincoln in the final four months of his life was a courageous choice for the director, Goodwin says. “He knows he can do huge epic stories and big battles and special effects, but this is an intimate story about Lincoln.”

And it’s just as she always imagined the 16th president. “So many people just see that face that looks so sad, but when he told a story, his whole face would light up and change,” she says.

“People write about how they would get irritated because he’s telling stories all the time, and that was Lincoln. In these very tense moments, he’d be laughing, but that’s what you have to do sometimes.”