Oscar-winner Natalie Portman is to play Jackie Kennedy in Darren Aronofsky's forthcoming movie about the aftermath of the JFK assassination. Aronofsky will produce 'Jackie', whoile the Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain will direct. 

Natalie PortmanNatalie Portman will play Jackie Kennedy in a movie produced by Darren Aronofsky

The film is being pitched to investors at the Cannes Film Festival and is unlikely to be ignored with Portman attached. Her last collaboration with Aronofsky - Black Swan - won Portman the Oscar for Best Actress.

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"Jackie talks about the days when Jackie Kennedy becomes an icon but has lost everything," said Vincent Maraval of French firm Wild Bunch, which is selling the film. "It's the Black Swan team reunited for Pablo Larraín."

Larrain's acclaimed drama The Club won the Berlin Film Festival's Grand Jury prize in February. Both Aronofsky and Portman were hugely impressed by the movie about a group of priests living on a windswept island who are plunged into crisis when one of them is accused of sexual abuse.

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Jackie is expected to focus on Kennedy's stoicism in the four days following her husband's assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963.Larrain hopes to film the movie towards the end of the year.

Biopics of 20th-century icons haven't always been too successful in recent years. The Diana Princess of Wales movie was roundly trashed by critics while Olivier Dahan's Grace of Monaco movie with Nicole Kidman was considered one of the worst movies of recent times.