A 15-year-old actress has pulled out of a Robert Redford film in order to appear on Broadway in the title role of The Diary of Anne Frank, Variety reported.

Natalie Portman, who appears in the current releases Mars Attacks! and Woody Allen's Everybody Says I Love You, is withdrawing from The Horse Whisperer, which will be directed by Redford, in order to appear in a fall 1997 revival of the 1955 drama about a Dutch-Jewish teenager hiding with her family from the Nazis during World War II.

Frank, who died in a concentration camp after her family was discovered, lived on in her diaries, which were found by the family that hid her. Portman reportedly regards Frank as a personal hero.

The revival will use a revised script that "includes more frank material than the original, such as the young girl's sexual awakening," Variety reported.

Portman, who had appeared previously in 1994's The Professional and 1996's Beautiful Girls, will be directed by James Lapine. Producers David Stone and Amy Nederlander-Case reportedly "expect to pair a top actor with Portman" in the role of her father, Otto Frank, but gave no name.