Weisz to play Elizabeth Taylor in biopic ‘A Special Relationship’

Based on the screenplay written by Academy Award-winner Simon Beaufoy, the production will be helmed by the female directing duo Bert&bertie

Rachel Weisz is set to star as Elizabeth Taylor in “A Special Relationship,” exploring Taylors journey from actress to activist. The story will be told through the lens of Taylor’s friendship with her assistant Roger Wall. Based on the screenplay writen by Academy Award-winner Simon Beaufoy, the upcoming production will be helmed by the female directing duo Bert&bertie, reports variety.com. Taylor won Oscars for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Buterfield 8” and was nominated a total of five times. Though famous for her glamorous lifestyle and multiple marriages, she also took a crusading role in the fight against Aids, which stemmed from her hiring of Walls, a man who grew up in poverty in the homophobic Deep South in the mid-1980s. Weisz won a best supporting actress Oscar for her turn in 2005’s “A Constant Gardener” and was nominated in the same category earlier this year for “The Favourite.”

Weisz was born on March 7, 1970, in London, UK, to Edith Ruth (Teich), a psychoanalyst, and George Weisz, an inventor. Her parents both came to England around 1938. Rachel started modelling when she was 14, and began acting during her studies at Cambridge University. While there, she formed a theatre company named “Talking Tongues,” which won the Guardian Award, at the Edinburgh Festival, for its take on Neville Southall’s “Washbag.” Rachel went on to star on stage in the lauded Sean Mathias revival of Noël Coward’s “Design For Living.” It was a role that won her a vote for Most Promising Newcomer by the London Critics’ Circle.

She has starred in many movies, including “The Supporting Actress nominee for ‘The Favourite’ Rachel Weisz arrives for the 91st Oscars Nominees Luncheon.

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Mummy” (1999), “Enemy at the Gates” (2001) and “Stealing Beauty” (1996). Rachel can also be seen in the movies “The Shape of Things” (2003), “About a Boy” (2002), “Constantine” (2005) and “The Constant Gardener” (2005), for which she won an Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Weisz plays Evanora, in “Oz the Great and Powerful,” which opened on 7 March 2013. In 2015, she appeared in drama film Youth and in science fiction film “The Lobster.”

In 2016, she appeared in the drama film “The Light Between Oceans,” with Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, and portrayed historian Deborah Lipstadt in Denial, a film based on Lipstadt’s book, and directed by Mick Jackson. In 2017 Weisz starred “My Cousin Rachel,” a drama based on Daphne du Maurier’s novel, and in 2018 co-starred in a British biographical film about sailor Donald Crowhurst, “The Mercy,” directed by James Marsh. Weisz’s production company, LC6 Productions, released its first feature film, “Disobedience, “in 2017, starring Weisz and Rachel Mcadams.

In 2018 Weisz played Sarah Churchill in the film “The Favourite,” garnering her the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and her second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Rachel has a son with her former partner, director Darren Aronofsky. In June 2011, she married “James Bond” actor Daniel Craig in a private ceremony in New York.