THE Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow is set to play Marlene Dietrich in an ambitious film about the German-American actress and singer.

DreamWorks, Steven Spielberg’s studio, has secured the blessing of the star’s estate for a film based on Maria Riva’s book Marlene Dietrich.

Paltrow will co-produce the film but Variety magazine yesterday reported that there was no firm timetable for the project. Paltrow is taking time off following the birth of her first child, Apple.

She is the second actress to have been inspired to play Dietrich. Uma Thurman was being lined up for the role in a production by Louis Malle until he died in 1995.

Dietrich (1901-1992) joined Max Reinhardt’s theatre company in 1922 and became an international star as the destructive cabaret singer Lola-Lola in Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel in 1930.

Sternberg took her to Hollywood, where they collaborated on many films, including Shanghai Express (1932) and The Scarlet Empress (1934) which established her aura of “glamorous sophistication and languid sensuality”.

During the Second World War she made more than 500 appearances for the Allied troops, refusing the Nazis’ entreaties to return to Germany. She also starred in films such as Destry Rides Again (1939), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), and Touch of Evil (1958). She toured widely as a nightclub performer into the 1960s, singing trademark songs such as Falling in Love Again.

Dietrich’s grandson Peter Riva told Variety: “Like Marlene, she (Paltrow) has the kind of body designers love to hang clothes on. And while Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald taught Marlene to maximise her limited vocal range, Gwyneth is a much better singer. She’ll just have to sultry up her voice a bit.”

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