Daisy Ridley has been looking for roles that take her away from the sci-fi likes of Star Wars and the upcoming Chaos Walking. She's found a plum part in the long-gestating Young Woman And The Sea, which adapts Glenn Stout's book about Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle, with Joaquim Rønning in talks to direct.
Ederle was the first woman ever to swim the English Channel: still a rarer achievement than scaling Everest. The American teenager completed the impressive feat in 1926, two years after winning gold at the 1924 Paris Olympics. She returned to the US one of the most famous women in the world, cheered through a ticker-tape parade in New York by an estimated crowd of 2 million people. But she disappeared from the public eye just as quickly. After playing herself in the film Swim Girl, Swim she embarked on an abortive career in vaudeville, and after a fall that damaged her spine, ended up teaching swimming to children. She died in 2003, aged 98.
Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have been trying to bring this one to the screen for years, with a previous version looking to lock down Lily James to star that never quite made the cine-crossing. All involved will be hoping Ridley and the rest have more luck, and the aim is for the film to arrive on Disney+.