British actor Alfred Molina is to take a lead role in one of the competing biopics of Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo, opposite Salma Hayek.
The 47-year-old Molina is in final negotiations to play Kahlo's husband, artist Diego Rivera, reports entertainment site unmissibleTV. Latin American actress Salma Hayek is to play the feminist painter, who was forced to do much of her work from her bed due to a childhood attack of polio and a severe accident at the age of 18 when her stomach and pelvis were pierced by a pole.
Also lined up to appear in the film, due to go into production in January, are Antonio Banderas, Ed Norton and Ashley Judd. Jennifer Lopez's as yet untitled Frida Kahlo biopic is also scheduled to begin production early next year, but the casting process is less advanced.
Meanwhile, Molina is being mooted as a possible Oscar nominee for his role in the forthcoming film about love and confectionery, Chocolat, in which he stars alongside Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. The film, due for release in the UK early next year, is an adaptation of Joanne Harris's best-selling novel which tells the story of a young mother (Binoche) who opens a chocolate factory in a small French town - much to the dismay of the town's other businessmen. Molina plays the Comte de Reynaud, a repressed character who is so confused by the sensual influence that the woman has on the people of the town, that he starts a campaign to have her thrown out.
Molina, a longtime resident of California, is best known for his lead role as Sergei in the 1985 British hit, Letter to Brezhnev, and as Joe Orton's lover Kenneth Halliwell in Prick Up Your Ears. Since moving to America, he has appeared in a number of TV movies and big screen flops, but his career has enjoying something of a renaissance with his recent appearances in Magnolia and Boogie Nights.
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