The Daily Mail newspaper reports that Spacey is searching for a female lead to co-star with him in Philip Barry’s The Philadelphia Story. It’s a title that keeps cropping up in London stage gossip, with producer Duncan Weldon supposedly once interested in staging it with Calista Flockhart, a project that now seems to have gone away. But the Mail suggests that a “Hollywood hottie” like Cameron Diaz or Gwyneth Paltrow might be enticed to share the stage with Spacey in the play. Certainly it needs a top female lead in a role that was written for Katharine Hepburn, who played it on Broadway and in the 1940 film. The 1980 Broadway revival starred Blythe Danner, Paltrow's mother.
Spacey is gearing up to announce four plays to start in September 2004. The Mail says we should expect The Philadelphia Story early in 2005, and also suggests that the Old Vic’s Christmas show may be Aladdin starring Ian McKellen in drag as Widow Twankey.
