Jessica Biel may have ranked 16th in our reader-voted 100 Sexiest Movie Stars Of All Timepoll, but she’s more than just a pretty face, a pert bottom and sweet, supple [That’s enough of that sort of thing – Ed.]
Yes, anyway, she’s an actress too, and after a good turn in last year’s The Illusionist, she’s set to further remind us of that after signing onto romantic Britcom, Easy Virtue, the latest film in the comeback of Ealing Studios.
Biel will play an American divorcee who travels to the South of France and, once there, marries a young Brit on the spur of the moment. Then they both have to travel back to England to face the music from his parents…
Based on a 1924 Noel Coward play that was filmed in 1928 by Alfred Hitchcock, of all people, Easy Virtue should certainly be jam-packed with witty one-liners. The impossibly good-looking Ben Barnes – soon to be seen as Prince Caspian in the next Narnia film – will play Biel’s new husband, while Colin Firth and Kristin Scott-Thomas get to grit their teeth as Barnes’ parents, and remember the time when they would have been playing the young leads.
Stephan Elliott, who last directed the slightly dodgy Ewan McGregor thriller, Eye Of The Beholder (back in 1999) will call the shots from a screenplay he co-wrote with Sheridan Jobbins (given that Mr. Coward is unavailable). Filming starts next week in and around London.