LADY GAGA, ANGELINA JOLIE VYING FOR CLEOPATRA
The A-list stars are in the race for playing the Queen of Nile — a role synonymous with Elizabeth Taylor — in the remake of the 1963 classic
Actors Lady Gaga and Angelina Jolie are in a battle to land a chance to play Cleopatra in a mega-budget film reboot.
The 43-year-old Oscar winner, Jolie has been in onoff talks for months with studio bosses over playing the part, which was essayed by actor Elizabeth Taylor in a 1963 film.
But Grammy-winning singer, Gaga, 32, is now also in the running following the success of A Star Is Born (2018), which was her big screen debut as a leading lady. Gaga was nominated in Golden Globes for her performance in the film.
A senior production source at the studio told The Daily Star: “Cleopatra was known as the Queen of the Nile, and Elizabeth Taylor firmly established herself as Hollywood’s queen in the 1963 film version. There’s every reason to think that whoever gets to play her this time round is going to enjoy an equally lofty perch in the motion picture industry.”
The 1963 movie won four THE SOURCE SAID IT COULD BE SO CLOSE BETWEEN ANGELINA JOLIE AND LADY GAGA THAT BOTH OF THEM WILL HAVE TO AUDITION FOR THE ROLE, WHICH IS A RARE THING FOR A-LIST STARS IN HOLLYWOOD Academy Awards and was billed as an “epic historical drama”.
However, the new Cleopatra is being touted by producers as a “dirty, bloody political thriller told from a feminist perspective”.
The source said it could be so close between Jolie and Gaga that “both of them will have to audition — a pretty rare ask of an A-list star”.
Actor Anne Hathaway says the toughest part of hosting the Academy Awards is facing the criticism the very next day.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, the 36-year-old, who had emceed the Oscars in 2011, said, “It feels nice, everybody tells you it’s going well while you’re doing it. While you’re doing it, it’s like doing anything, you know? My approach to all this stuff is really simple: we’re lucky. Whether or not it does well or it bombs, this is the stuff of dreams. This is not something to get upset about.”
The Oscar winner said failing at the hosting job does “sting a bit”, adding, “The lessons that I learned, the life lessons about whom to trust and when to trust them, that’s going to be the net positive.”
Hathaway also shared her views about the controversy surrounding Kevin Hart, who recently stepped down from hosting this year’s Oscars after his old homophobic tweets resurfaced on social media.
She said, “I do just want to go on record and say the LGBTQ community needs all the allies in the world and deserves all the allies in the world.”