Kristin Scott Thomas has joined the cast of Ben Wheatley’s new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’, taking on a prominent role.
Scott Thomas will play the role of Mrs Danvers, the main antagonist of Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca. Danvers is the head housekeeper at Manderley, the stately manor belonging to the wealthy Maximillian “Maxim” de Winter, where he once lived with his first wife, Rebecca.
She joins the already cast Lily James who will play the second Mrs. de Winter, a young woman who has married a rich, handsome, cold and fascinating widower Max De Winter only to find out that she must live in the shadow of his former wife, Rebecca, who died under mysterious circumstances several years earlier. Armie Hammer will play the role of Max De Winter.
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The Gothic novel by English author Dame Daphne du Maurier was a best-seller between 1938 and 1965. The novel is a passionate, psychological and complex story which follows orphaned Rebecca as she works as a lady’s companion and learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. Whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to his brooding estate, Manderley, on the Cornish Coast, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding Mrs Danvers
The book had previously been brought to life on the big screen by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940 and starred Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. It won two Academy Awards, Best Picture and Cinematography, out of a total 11 nominations.
Filming will commence later this year.
