Stars scramble to shine in literary sensation, 'Before I Go to Sleep'

• John Harlow
• From:The Australian
• August 08, 2011
• 
  Steven Watson, author of bestseller Before I Go to Sleep. 

SOME of Hollywood's most glamorous leading ladies are bidding against each other to play a middle-aged woman from north London who cannot remember what happened yesterday.

The subject of this sudden explosion of thespian interest, a "thin-lipped lank-haired" woman, is the protagonist of a first-time British author's novel called Before I Go to Sleep.

The thriller soared to No 7 in the bestseller lists in America, the highest placed first book by a British author since J. K. Rowling. The New York Times described the author, a former National Health Service employee from the West Midlands called S. J. Watson - the first initial stands for Steven - as an "out-of-nowhere literary sensation".
Already the film rights have been snapped up by Scott Free, the production company run by the sibling directors Ridley and Tony Scott, for a sum large enough for the Stourbridge-born author to take the next two years off "to experiment with a new book".

Kate Winslet, 35, and Cate Blanchett, 42, are among the actresses said to have expressed interest in the role of Christine, the 47-year-old amnesiac who, after being hit by a car, wakes every morning convinced she is 20 years younger.

Over the past few days, agents representing several Hollywood-based actresses have started jostling for the choice role already described as a showy Oscar contender.
According to trade magazines, these include Helen Hunt, 48, who won an Oscar performing with Jack Nicholson in the 1997 romantic comedy As Good as it Gets, and Meg Ryan, 49, who established a company called Prufrock to turn literary novels into movies


Full story at The Australian.