It's been a few years since news first broke that Kate Winslet was starring in a drama based on just part of the life of American model, artist and war correspondent Elizabeth “Lee” Miller. Things have certainly moved forward, as Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Andrea Riseborough and Josh O'Connor will all join her in the cast.
Back when the first word arrived, there was neither a writer nor director attached, but since then, cinematographer Ellen Kuras has landed the job of directing, working from a script by Liz Hannah.
Known for both her glamour and her mind, Miller was a muse and collaborator to the likes of Pablo Picasso and painter/photographer Man Ray, and, thanks to her early education in the technical aspects of photography, took over from the latter when he expressed a desire to concentrate on his other art. During World War II, she began a career as a photojournalist, documenting the Blitz and travelling to France shortly after D-Day where she witnessed the first recorded use of napalm and the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps in Germany.
“This is absolutely not a biopic,” Winslet tells Deadline. “To make a story about Lee’s whole life, that’s a series worth for HBO. What we wanted to do was find the most interesting decade in her life, the one that defined who she was and what she became because of what she went through. It was the period from 1938-1948 that took her right through the war and her most defining time. That is the story we want people to know about Lee more than the many other parts of her life.” To see more from Winslet, head to Deadline's site. The film should be filming in late summer or early autumn next year.