Actress Rachel Weisz, who won an Oscar for her role in The Constant Gardener and was nominated this year for the prestigious supporting roles for The Favorite, has awarded another score that could attract the Academy’s attention. According to variety.com, she was chosen to play Elizabeth Taylor in a biographical film focused on her anti-AIDS activity.
The film will be called A Special Relationship and will feature Simon Beaufoy, the writer of 127 Hours and Slumdog Millionaire. In an interview with Metro.us last year, he said the project is “the story of one of the unspoken loves of his life, that of his gay assistant.” This is Roger Wall, who died in 1991 after being diagnosed with HIV.
The unusual friendship between Taylor and Wall (raised in a climate of homophobia) turned the famous actress into an activist whose fight against AIDS would last a lifetime (during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, she even coordinated and a supply chain of drug dealers, for the benefit of patients diagnosed with HIV). For all his effort and involvement, he received an honorary Oscar in 1993 (in addition to those from 1960 and 1967 for Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?).
A Special Relationship will be produced by See-Saw Films, and executive producers will include two of the Elizabeth Taylor Foundation members (Barbara Berkowitz and Tim Mendelson).
