Jennifer Lawrence has signed on to play Fidel Castro’s teenage lover in the period spy drama Marita, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Lawrence will play the German-born American agent Marita Lorenz, once described as a real-life female James Bond, who was recruited by the CIA to poison Castro in 1960 but failed to carry out the attack. The film is based on a treatment by Eric Warren Singer, co-writer of American Hustle, who will work on the screenplay.
Lorenz first met Castro in 1959, weeks after the conclusion of the Cuban revolution, after arriving in Havana on her father’s ocean liner. The revolutionary leader was taken with the 19-year-old and they became lovers. However, the couple parted after Lorenz became pregnant and had an abortion. A year later, the young woman returned to Cuba with CIA backing, but confessed the poisoning plot to Castro after telling the prime minister she still loved him.
Marita is being set up at studio Sony but does not yet have a director attached. Lawrence, who will also produce, recently picked up her fourth Oscar nomination for her turn as Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano in David O Russell’s Joy. Her upcoming projects include space romance Passengers, opposite Chris Pratt, and a final turn as mutant Mystique in X-Men: Apocalypse.
