Former Doctor Who actor Matt Smith has signed up to play the celebrated photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in a new biopic, Deadline have reported.
The film, entitled Mapplethorpe, will be directed by Ondi Timoner (best known for her documentaries Dig! and Brand: A Second Coming), and is set to feature Girls’ Zosia Mamet as musician Patti Smith, Mapplethorpe’s former lover. Mapplethorpe died in 1989 from Aids-related illnesses, after creating a controversial body of work that included celebrity portraiture, album covers (notably Smith’s Horses) and erotica.
Matt Smith, who preceded Peter Capaldi as the Doctor in the long-running BBC TV series, has made occasional forays into film, with a small but pivotal role in Terminator Genisys and a more substantial one as Mr Collins in the forthcoming adaptation of Jane Austen parody novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
