Keira Knightley is in talks to star in biopic ‘Colette.’
If she boards the cast, the 30-year-old star will play the renowned French novelist – also known as Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette – who was nominated for a Nobel Prize for literature in 1948 and is famed for writing ‘Gigi’, a novel about a young Parisian girl being groomed for a career as a courtesan.
However the film will tell the true story of the author – who was born in 1873 – and her first marriage to the fashionable socialite Willy Gauthier-Villars, who was also a writer and music critic and her mentor.
The story goes that Willy locked his wife up to write novels for him that subsequently became huge best sellers and made him rich, though Colette inevitably rose out of his shadow.
Filming is due to start in May in Budapest and
‘Carol’s Pam Koffler and Christine Vachon will produce the title, along with Elizabeth Karlsen, Stephen Woolley and Bold Films.
Chairman of Bold Films Michel Litvak said about the British actress: "Keira is impeccably suited to step into the role of the iconic Colette in the early 1900s, who pushed the envelope in a time when women writers were shunned and bisexuality was scandalous. We are honored to bring her story to the big screen."
Kiera – who has eight-month-old daughter Edie with husband James Righton – recently finished her Broadway debut in Helene Edmundson’s ‘Therese Raquin’ which is based on the 1867 novel of the same name by Émile Zola.
Keira Knightley in talks for Colette
