Colin Firth and 'sea widow' Kate Winslet hit choppy waters in new film

PUBLISHED: 17:41 EST, 31 October 2013 | UPDATED: 19:06 EST, 31 October 2013

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Colin Firth and Kate Winslet are in very early discussions about starring in a film based on an infamous yacht-racing cheat whose misadventure on the high seas more than four decades ago still haunts his family.

The actors, both Oscar winners, have read a screenplay by Scott Burns about how Donald Crowhurst duped his family, race organisers and the public into believing that he had spent 240 days circumnavigating the globe in a prestigious single-handed, non-stop odyssey.

Firth would portray Crowhurst, with Winslet playing his wife, Clare — who was known at the time as the ‘sea widow’.

Colin Firth is rumoured to take the lead cheat role as Donald Crowhurst against Kate Winslet as his long suffering 'sea widow' Clare

Long, wrong, journey: Colin Firth is rumoured to take the lead cheat role as Donald Crowhurst against Kate Winslet as his long suffering 'sea widow' Clare

Crowhurst set out in 1968 and was expected to return home the following year after the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race.

The public’s imagination had been fired by reports of derring-do on the high seas, following Francis Chichester’s triumphant sea-faring voyage, and so tales of incredible endurance on treacherous oceans were as exciting to follow as, say, last year’s London Olympics.

Of the nine competitors in the race, Crowhurst was the worst equipped and the least qualified. His trimaran, Teignmouth Electron, was slow, and then it sprung a leak.

‘This bloody boat is just falling to pieces!’ he wrote in his log.

He was so far behind the others that he set in motion a plan to deceive the world by falsifying his locations on the ship-to-shore messages sent from his Marconi radio (remember: this was the pre-digital age!).

Crowhurst slowly went mad, trying to keep up with his deceptions about his whereabouts. It’s a fascinating story, and was massive at the time.

I can recall, during a stint with the sea scouts in Mortlake, being told when I went rowing not to ‘do a Crowhurst’ and go missing.

I understand Burns has written a terrific script, and that the part of Clare Crowhurst is a cracking one, showing how the mother of four tried to cope while her husband was gone.

She was forced to go on the dole, because her home and Crowhurst’s business were all financially wrapped up in the duplicitous voyage. Producers at Blueprint Pictures refused to comment last night, but I understand that if they can secure agreement from the two leading actors, the movie could possibly shoot later next year or early in 2015 — well, after Kate gives birth to her third baby, which is due soon.

Her next film, Labor Day, opens here on February 7, while another movie, A Little Chaos, shot during her pregnancy, will be released next autumn.

Meanwhile, Firth is playing a kick-ass spy in Matthew Vaughn’s thriller The Secret Service. He’s also providing the voice for the Paddington Bear film — and he’s starring, along with Nicole Kidman and Jeremy Irving, in The Railway Man.

Watch out for...

Even more exotic: Tamsin Greig stars in hotel sequel

Tamsin Greig, who is about to sign on to join Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton and Ronald Pickup in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

It’s the sequel to the wildly successful Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, about a pack of British retired folk enticed to kick up their heels at a rambling pile run by Dev Patel in the Jaipur district of Rajasthan, and like the first film, based on Deborah Moggach’s novel These Foolish Things.

Judi told me a couple of weeks back that she would have been ‘very cross’ had she not been asked back for the movie, which shoots in the UK in December and in India for 12 weeks from January.

John Madden returns as director, as does Ol Parker as screen-writer.

The cast have said that it’s a testament to the fun they had filming the original picture, and to the strength of the new screenplay, that they’ve booked in again.

Ms Greig, who stars in Episodes and is the voice of Debbie Aldridge in The Archers, will play a mysterious woman who checks into the inn.

Richard Gere is in talks to join the ensemble, but his deal has hit a sticky patch and is nowhere near completion.

Adebayo Bolaji, Christian Dante White, Colman Domingo, Julian Glover, Dawn Hope, Idriss Kargo, Forrest McClendon, Rohan Pinnock-Hamilton, Clinton Roane, Emile Ruddock, Carl Spencer, Kyle Scatliffe and James T. Lane, who are the exceptional ensemble raising the roof — and the matter of injustice — in The Scottsboro Boys at the Young Vic.

I wrote about this John Kander and Fred Ebb musical, directed with brio by Susan Stroman, when I saw it at New York’s Vineyard Theatre. I was stunned then (and even more so now) by this story of how nine black men were unjustly charged with raping two white women in Alabama. The tale is told in the style of a minstrel show, which makes it all the more potent, and poignant.

Someone asked me if I would love The Scottsboro Boys as much as I do if the accused were white, and I responded, without equivocation, that I would.

It’s as powerful as any show London has seen in years, so seek it out at the Young Vic — the perfect home for it.

Dane DeHaan, who is in talks about starring with Alicia Vikander in the film version of another Deborah Moggach novel, Tulip Fever, to be directed by Justin Chadwick (who helped Idris Elba deliver the best performance of his career as Nelson Mandela in Mandela: The Long Walk To Freedom).

However, DeHaan is just too darn hot, and may have to turn down Tulip Fever because it clashes with a film called Life, in which he will portray James Dean in the last months of his life.

Dying legend: Dane Dehaan is set to portray James Dean, right, during the iconic star's final years

Life will be directed by Anton Corbijn and it’s about how Life Magazine photographer Dennis Stock captured the essence of Dean in a series of now iconic portraits of the star in 1955, shortly before he died.

I hope DeHaan’s able to do both. But in the meantime, do catch him opposite the increasingly fine Daniel Radcliffe in Kill Your Darlings (which opens here on December 6), although note it’s definitely one for grown-ups.

Nonso Anozie, who is good as the drill sergeant who puts Asa Butterfield through his paces in the thrilling sci-fi picture Ender’s Game.

Nonso is also a mighty presence in Sky Living’s glossy drama series Dracula, where he serves as what he termed the vampire’s ‘Swiss army knife’, like a Jack-of-all trades. And he’s in Kenneth Branagh’s Disney extravaganza Cinderella.

He’s come a long way since Joe Wright cast him in the memorable WWII scenes in Atonement .

There’s chatter about further episodes of the superb three-part BBC courtroom thriller The Escape Artist, starring David Tennant, which began on Tuesday.

Creator David Wolstencroft mused: ‘Why don’t we do returning shows in batches of three, like Sherlock?’

Genevieve O’Reilly played the Glenn Close ‘bunny boiler’ role in a workshop of the stage version of Fatal Attraction, so writer James Dearden and director Trevor Nunn could see how the script stood up. The play starts previewing at Theatre Royal Haymarket on March 8.

Big star names are being discussed for the project, but Ms O’Reilly stands a chance if a major name is cast in the Michael Douglas role.

The play’s ending will be completely different from the film’s heart- stopping, bath-drowning, pistol-firing conclusion.