Stars compete for Bettie Page role

The bizarre life story of 1950s pinup princess Bettie Page is to be filmed, with Liv Tyler, Charlize Theron and Hilary Swank all vying for the role of the whip-cracking, leather-loving Page.

Page, an iconic beauty who could pose as a fresh-faced girl next door or a leather-clad fetish queen, is a cult figure. At the height of her popularity she was grilled by a Senate committee investigating juvenile delinquency. She was later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and committed to a mental hospital for 12 years.

James Swanson, author of the book Bettie Page: Life of a Pin-up Legend, who is co-producing the film, says it will be “a great untold story of New York in the 1950s”.

He tells the New York Post he hopes Tyler will play Page. “The meaning and importance of Bettie’s era doesn’t have to be taught and spoonfed to Liv Tyler,” he said. “She knows it already.

“Bettie is the entry point into a great New York noir story that’s now lost - the underground fetish scene, the camera clubs where groups of serious and impostor photographers would pay a fee to take pictures of a beautiful woman naked – this is a much a part of the film as Bettie is.”