Cynthia Nixon to take on Dickenson role

Cynthia Nixon will star as poet Emily Dickinson in biopic 'A Quiet Passion'.

The 'Sex and the City' actress has been cast as the late US writer - who died at the age of 55 in 1886 - in the movie by British director Terence Davies, who is "over the moon" that the 46-year-old actress accepted his offer to play one of the greatest American poets of all time.

Terence told the Hollywood Reporter: "I wrote the screenplay with Cynthia in mind. It was the kind of dream casting you hope for. I never, for a moment, imagined my wishes would materialise.

"Cynthia has such a strong feeling for the work - and now she is our Emily Dickinson. I'm over the moon."

The movie will tell the story of Emily's life from her time as a schoolgirl to becoming a tortured recluse who saw only seven of more than 1,000 poems she had published in her lifetime.

Cynthia - who recently starred alongside Woody Harrelson, Steve Buscemi and Sigourney Weaver in crime movie 'Rampart' - insists she was desperate to land the role of Emily as soon as she read Terence's script.

She said: "When I read what Terence had written, I was consumed by the character he had so beautifully put on the page.

"Emily Dickinson's words and Terence's somehow dovetail to create a heady elixir. When I put the script down, I knew it was a story that I simply had to be part of."

Sol Papadopoulos and Roy Boulter are to produce the film, and Agyness Deyn and Peter Mullan have both been linked to the motion picture.