Dame Helen Mirren has signed on to take the lead role in John Madden’s upcoming thriller, The Debt.
Mirren will play a former Mossad agent who, along with two colleagues, fails to capture a Nazi war criminal. They decide to cover their tracks, only for the criminal to resurface thirty years later, prompting Mirren to track him down before the truth can be revealed.
Seems like this could be a doozy of a role for the ever-wonderful Mirren – not only will there be a great deal of soul-searching and self-examination, there should be the chance to see a sixtysomething woman kick arse on the big screen.
To be honest, we should have seen Mirren’s casting coming the minute we discovered that the plot called for two actresses to play the main character – one in her thirties, and the other in her sixties. Quite frankly, there aren’t many actresses around these days who could handle a role like this – and Mirren is at the top of a very short list.
The movie, which starts filming next year, is a co-production between Matthew Vaughn’s Marv Films, and Miramax. Vaughn is writing the script, with his Stardust cohort, Jane Goldman.