Tautou To Play Coco Chanel

Sophie Neveu and Amelie drink up Coco

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Monday, May 21st 2007 at 4:56 AM

Audrey Tautou is hardly a household name even though she did star in The Da Vinci Code. She is primarily known for her role in Amelie (a movie I am yet to see), but I did enjoy her in A Very Long Engagement, which is an absolutely stunning film. However, I don't think her next role is going to make her all that much of a bigger name as she is set to star in a biopic as the legendary French fashion designer Coco Chanel.

Anne Fontaine is set to direct the feature, which will focus on Chanel's childhood and early womanhood, which apparently was specially conceived with Tautou in mind. Fontaine penned the script with Christopher Hampton, which was adapted from the Chanel biography "L'Irreguliere" by Edmonde Charles-Roux.

Variety brings us the news from the Cannes Film Festival and also goes on to describe Chanel's life saying:

The woman who invented French chic was born into poverty as Gabrielle Chanel, the illegitimate daughter of a traveling salesman, in 1883. After the death of her mother and abandonment by her father she spent seven years in a Catholic orphanage, where she learned to sew. But fashion wasn't her first career choice. As a young woman, Chanel had ambitions to be a singer and it was while warbling "Who's Seen Coco in the Trocadero" in a cabaret that she acquired the nickname Coco.

While working as a cabaret singer, she also took to sewing the stage clothes for the likes of French cabaret star Mistinguette before being taken under the wing wealthy Balsan. His chateau became Chanel's home and her gateway to a new life.

Balsan introduced her to Capel, who played a crucial role in Chanel's rise to fashion fame and fortune.

The film is expected to shoot in early 2008.