Girls star Zosia Mamet to play Patti Smith in Robert Mapplethorpe biopic

Doctor Who actor Matt Smith has been cast in the lead as the controversial photographer

Zosia Mamet will play Patti Smith in Mapplethorpe (Getty Images)

Girls actress Zosia Mamet has been cast as ‘godmother of punk’ Patti Smith in a new biopic about photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Mapplethorpe was Smith’s ex-boyfriend and collaborator, who shot her iconic Horses album cover and inspired her 2013 memoir Just Kids.

His photography style was controversial: he rose to fame in the Seventies with avant-garde, highly sexual Polaroid pictures of New York.

“I don’t like that particular word ‘shocking’,” he said in 1988. “I’m looking for the unexpected. I’m looking for things I’ve never seen before.”

Mapplethorpe died of AIDS in 1989 aged just 42.

Matt Smith, best known for Doctor Who, has signed on to play the lead in Mapplethorpe with Deadline reporting that Ondi Timoner is directing.

Just Kids, which tells the story of Smith’s early life and relationship with Mapplethorpe, is also set to be made into a TV series.

Smith hopes the project will “allow us to explore the characters more deeply, enabling us to develop stories beyond the book and allow a measure of unorthodox presentation”.