Saoirse Ronan to Play Title Role in Emma Thompson’s EFFIE

Actress/Screenwriter Emma Thompson has been working on a biopic of Effie Gray for some time now, and it appears that it’s finally gearing up to go into production.  When we spoke with Carey Mulligan back in March, she told us that she had read the Effie script a while back and was previously attached to the project, but she hadn’t heard anything as of late.  It now appears that Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones) will take on the title role instead.  Production Weekly says that the Thompson-scripted project will also star Orlando Bloom, Greg Wise (Johnny English), Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), and Thompson herself.

Gray was the wife of English art critic John Ruskin, and became entangled in a famous Victorian love triangle that has been adapted into more than a few novels and plays.  Without consummating the relationship, Gray left her husband, had the marriage annulled, and married Ruskin’s protégé John Everett Millius.  Greg Wise (who is also Thompson’s husband) is reported to play Ruskin, with Bloom assumed to be portraying Millius.  Thompson is no stranger to screenwriting, as she won the Academy Award for it with 1995’s Sense and Sensibility.