Oscar Winner Colin Firth To Play Noel Coward in New Film Bio

Academy Award-winner Colin Firth will star as the legendary actor/singer/writer Noel Coward in an upcoming film titled Mad Dogs and Englishmen.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Firth will portray the often flamboyant entertainer in a film that follows Coward's two week-stint as a Las Vegas headliner in 1955. 

The Desert Inn, desperate after Liberace cancelled a booking, offered the job to the unlikely Coward.  Coward, who wrote the play "Private Lives," took the job because he owed taxes to the British government.   The show became an instant hit, a Vegas legend, and added more lustre to Coward's already legendary career.

Firth is coming off an Oscar for The King's Speech, as well as a nomination for A Single Man.  He appeared last year in the spy thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and is scheduled to star in a remake of the classic heist film Gambit later this year.

Here's a clip from the 1968 musical Star!, with Julie Andrews as Gertrude Lawrence and Oscar-nominated Daniel Massey portraying Coward:

For more on the film Star! on DVD: