Marion Cotillard to play Lady Macbeth opposite Michael Fassbender

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French actress Marion Cotillard has played her fair share of hard-headed women. From her Academy Award-winning turn as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose to Miranda in The Dark Knight Rises, the slight, beautiful actress has skilfully subverted feminine stereotypes onscreen. But now she is set to take on one of Shakespeare’s most complex female characters: Lady Macbeth.

She will co-star with Michael Fassbender in the title role of Macbeth directed by Justin Kurzel (Snowtown, 2011), according to industry news website Deadline.

Black Swan star Natalie Portman had previously been in the running to play the Thane of Cawdor’s scheming wife and eventual Queen, but Cotillard won the part.

Pre-production is slated for the end of the year the King’s Speech and Shame’s Iain Canning and Emile Sherman producing. The See-Saw film is being financed by Studiocanal and Film4.

Yesterday it was announced that film director and actor Sir Kenneth Branagh is set to take his theatrical production of Macbeth, which premiered at the Manchester International Festival in July, to New York next summer.

Sir Kenneth plays the title role opposite Alex Kingston as Lady Macbeth.