How to Swing an Ax Like Abraham Lincoln

To transform into our 16th president for the history-bending Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, out June 22, Benjamin Walker exhaustively researched Lincoln's life. He endured a 6-hour process while artists applied foam latex facial prosthetics to produce the former president's visage. And he worked out up to 4 hours per day to get Abe's frame. But perhaps the most important part of his training involved getting comfortable with Lincoln's favorite tool: an ax.

In the film, the president uses the silver-coated blade as a spinning, twirling weapon of vampire destruction. "History picked the weapon," director Timur Bekmambetov says. "It's what he used in real life. The ax tells us Lincoln was tough. He was a badass."

Bekmambetov wanted Lincoln's ax wielding to have a martial arts?inspired flair, so fight coordinator Don Lee and stuntman Justin Eaton developed that fighting style?and schooled Walker in their new art form. Eaton, who also served as Walker's stunt double and specializes in the bo staff, was the one who figured out how to wield the weapon. "He just picked up an ax and started spinning it," stunt coordinator Mic Rodgers says, "and within a day he'd figured out how to use it differently and how to adapt his style to it."

While getting a feel for the ax, Eaton discovered that its dimensions needed some tweaking. "We made the handle a little bit longer and the head a little bit bigger," Rodgers says. "Because of the physicality of spinning it around the neck and rolling it over the shoulders, it needed to be certain dimensions so it would fit Ben." (Walker is six feet three inches tall.)

Real axes are too heavy and too dangerous to use in production, so Walker trained with six stunt axes made of rubber and in various weights and degrees of hardness, each for a particular sequence or type of fighting. (The filmmakers called in craftsmen who specialize in historical weapons to build the photo-ready axes used during filming.) The actor spent eight weeks twirling and spinning the tool as part of his daily training regimen. "[Lee and Eaton] kicked my ass," Walker says. "[They're] the best stunt guys in the business."

All that training paid off: During filming, Bekmambetov says, Walker did all of the ax wielding himself. "I don't remember one shot with an ax that was someone else," the director says. "He was better. Because it's not just about the swing, it's about how you express yourself. Your hand is acting, the ax is acting. He was good." But that doesn't mean it all went smoothly: "All the time, he was missing and smashing the stunt guys' heads with the ax."

"A number of stunt guys really took their licks," Walker says. "They were tough enough to stand there while I hit them in the face with the rubber ax. Because [the film is in 3D], you can't fudge the distance. You have to get as close as possible. So, yeah, there were a number of accidents."

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