Depp and Paradis in Hallstrom film about Simone de Beauvoir

(AFP PHOTO / Robyn BECK)

Among the many projects that Johnny Depp is working on, including the next Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, the actor will be starring in My American Dream, co-starring French actress Vanessa Paradis, his companion. Lasse Hallstrom ( Dear John) will direct the film which follows the story of French author Simone de Beauvoir.

Also called My American Lover, the real-life couple portrays the feminist writer and her lover Nelson Algren, who wrote The Man With the Golden Arm. Singer and actress Paradis's film credits include Girl on the Bridge and Heartbreaker.

Depp plays the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in 3D, out in the US and other regions this week. Next, he will be seen in The Rum Diary, an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's novel about a journalist facing a turning point at a run-down newspaper in the Caribbean. In the 1998 film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, based on another Thompson book, Depp portrays a thinly disguised version of the journalist.

Also, Depp will star with Angelina Jolie in a romantic thriller, The Tourist, which just begun shooting, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck ( The Lives of Others).

RC