Ruth Bader Ginsburg shed some light on the upcoming biopic about her in an interview with her former clerk, California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu, this past Saturday.
Starring Natalie Portman, “On the Basis of Sex” focuses on the Supreme Court justice’s early career as a feminist legal crusader.
“Natalie Portman came to talk to me about this, and we had a very good conversation,” Ginsburg recalled. “And one thing, interesting, that she insisted on, it held up the project for awhile. She said, ‘I want the director to be a woman. There are not enough women in this industry. There are many talented out there.’ And now they do have a woman director.”
Currently in negotiations to direct the film is Marielle Heller, whose “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” became the breakout hit of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
At the same event, Ginsburg called her status as an “icon” among young feminists “amazing,” adding, “To think of me, an icon, at 82?”
“On the Basis of Sex” is written by Daniel Stiepleman, the nephew of Ginsburg’s late husband, Martin Ginsburg. “He asked if he could write a script about a case in which Marty and I were involved in 1971,” the justice said, “and I said, ‘Yes, if you like to spend your time doing that.’”
The script landed on the 2014 Black List, as well as on the inaugural Athena List, the Athena Film Festival’s award for promising screenplays with female leaders or strong women protagonists.
After some time away from the screen, Portman makes a splashy return to theaters both in front of and behind the cameras. The Oscar-winning actress made her directorial debut at this year’s Cannes Film Festival with “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” an adaptation of author Amos Oz’s memoir of the same name. She will next appear on screen in the feminist Western “Jane Got a Gun,” which she also produced, as well as in Terrence Malick’s next two films, “Knight of Cups” and “Weightless.”
[via MSNBC]
