Rooney Mara will play Audrey Hepburn in a new biopic of the actor Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The film will be directed by Luca Guadagnino, the Italian director best known for the Oscar nominee Call Me By Your Name, as well as A Bigger Splash and its remake of Suspiria.
It will be written by Michael Mitnick, who collaborated with Guadagnino on the 2019 short The Staggering Girl, and who also has a Jim Henson biopic in production.
Hepburn’s graceful renditions in films like Roman Holiday, Sabrina, and My Fair Lady, along with her iconic image, have meant that she has remained in the public consciousness for nearly 30 years since her death in 1993 at age 63.
Born in 1929 to a Dutch baroness and a British diplomat, she spent much of her adolescence under Nazi occupation in the Netherlands under an assumed Dutch name, fearful of appearing English. However, she also performed in dance recitals to raise funds for the resistance and transferred messages on her ballet slippers.
After training as a dancer, French author Colette saw her in 1950 on a Monaco beach, who chose her to star in the Broadway transfer of her novel Gigi.
Two years later, Hepburn won an Oscar, a Bafta, and a Golden Globe for Roman Holiday, beginning a remarkably successful film career, from which she largely retired 14 years later, to raise her family and work for UNICEF.
Mara, 36, was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Todd Haynes’ romance Carol, and also starred in David Fincher’s remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Leon, Her and Mary Magdalene.