Lily Rabe to Play Iconic American Actress Mary Pickford in Biopic

Lily Rabe will play early film star Mary Pickford in an upcoming movie based on Eileen Whitfield’s biography Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood, according to Deadline.com. The currently untitled project will be written by Josh Fagin, and production is planning to begin in early 2013.

No additional casting has been announced, but the film will feature key characters in Pickford’s life, like her United Artists co-founders Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith, as well as her mother and manager Charlotte Hennessy and her friend and collaborator Frances Marion.

Rabe made her Broadway debut in Steel Magnolias and has since appeared in Heartbreak House, The American Plan, The Merchant of Venice (Tony nomination) and Seminar. Her screen credits include American Horror Story, and films All Good Things, Aftermath and Letters from the Big Man. She will return to the New York stage in Shakespeare in the Park’s upcoming production of As You Like It this summer.