ABOUT A GIRL

Now that they’ve found the boy - Hugh Grant, apparently, as I mentioned here in the last issue - all attention is focused on finding the girl.

The film in question is, of course, the big-screen adaptation of Nick Hornby’s ‘New Lad’ novel, About a Boy, and the problem is finding an actress who can play the single mother with whom the (anti)hero has an affair. The book is about the fact that he does this a lot, preferring single mothers because there is less chance of emotional complications. But this one turns serious when he becomes attached to the woman’s 12-year-old son.

Leading contenders for the part now reportedly include Toni Collette and Emma Thompson. Australian-born Collette’s career has seen her shift, chameleon-like, from the overweight title character in Muriel’s Wedding to the ultra-thin rock chick in Velvet Goldmine. More recently, she has been going through her ‘victim’ period, playing the mother of the boy who sees dead people in Sixth Sense and the barmaid whom our hero does his best to protect in Shaft. Since then, she has done a small role in Billy Elliot director Stephen Daldry’s first ‘real’ Hollywood film, The Hours, and has co-starred with Samuel L Jackson in Changing Lanes.

Thompson, meanwhile, had basically given up screen acting to be with her daughter, the only real exception being her collaboration with Mike Nichols on the HBO movie, Wit, which screened recently at the Berlin Film Festival. “She does what interests her and what she wants to do,” Nichols told me at that time. “On several occasions, she has turned things down because she does not want to be a movie star.” But that hasn’t stopped the Weitz brothers - who are set to direct the film - trying to persuade her to play opposite Grant in About a Boy (the last time they worked together was on Sense and Sensibility, for which Thompson won an Oscar).

Speaking of the Daldry film, Nicole Kidman will be shooting her sequences in The Hours pretty much as you read this (she was due to start work in early May). But Daldry is not the only Euro director to attract the Aussie actress’ attention in her post-Tom era. She is reportedly also in talks with Danish director Lars von Trier to star in his next film, Dogville.

The film - like von Trier’s 2000 Cannes Palme d’Or-winner Dancer in the Dark - is set in a small American town in the thirties (and will thus probably also be filmed in southern Sweden, which can be made to look quite like the Pacific Northwest). Music is expected to play an important part in the new film, too, and the cast is also thought to include Stellan Skarsgård and Katrin Cartlidge, both of whom worked with the director on Breaking the Waves. Beyond that, all is secret - which is pretty much par for the course when it comes to von Trier. After all, all we knew about Dancer before it screened at Cannes was that the director had had a difficult time with his lead actress, Björk.

EASTWOOD GOES WITH THE FLOW

Passing three score years and 10 (which he did at the end of last May) doesn’t seem to have done anything to slow down Clint Eastwood’s appetite for work. Well, maybe a little: it’s now a film every other year instead of annually.

Next up (after 2000’s Space Cowboys, which he both directed and starred in) will be a thriller called Mystic River. It’s based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, and is about three childhood friends who are split up when one of them is kidnapped, then reunite after 25 years when the same one’s daughter is murdered.

The film will be made under the deal Eastwood’s company, Malpaso, has with Warner Bros (one of Hollywood’s longest lasting), but has yet to get any further than the search for a writer to adapt the novel.

Director Shekhar Kapur is currently doing post-production on his big-budget remake of classic The Four Feathers, which began shooting in Morocco last October and has seen a few producer changes along the way.

Meanwhile, another much gentler idea he had about a young Indian who settles in New York is going full steam ahead without any such problems. This may be because the film is called The Guru of Sex, since that is what the hero - through a string of misunderstandings - eventually becomes.

Kapur will produce the film, which Daisy Mayer directs. The guru himself will be played by British actor Jimi Mistry, best known for the hit comedy East Is East, with Heather Graham as his girlfriend and Marisa Tomei as the woman who handles his career. Shooting began early last month (April).