And Then There’s Maud …

Blue Jasmine star Cate Blanchett and her on-screen sister, played by Sally Hawkins.

Fresh off her successful portrayal of Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett’s underachieving on-screen sister in the hit Woody Allen film “Blue Jasmine,” Limey actress Sally Hawkins has been tapped to play famed Nova Scotia folk artist Maud Lewis in the 2015 romantic drama “Maudie.”

 

Canuck Sherry White, who once served as a consulting producer on the Global TV-airing police drama Rookie Blue, penned the script. Dublin-born Aisling Walsh will direct.

It’s worth noting that neither Hawkins nor Walsh was attached to the project when word of its potential existence first surfaced two years ago. According to an online report published by Global News in August 2012, the cinematic endeavour was to be directed by Montreal native Jean-Francois Pouliot, with London, Ontario beauty Rachel “The Notebook” McAdams in the titular role.

Smile and the world smiles with you: Maud, Sally and Rachel

“I can’t think of a better fit for Maud Lewis than Hawkins,” wrote Canadian Living’s Scott MacDonald in an online report earlier this month.  “Films about real people pretty much live or die by their casting … (and while) Hawkins (who can currently be seen in “Godzilla”) is a movie star … she’s not the usual glamour-puss – her beauty is unconventional, and her big, toothy smile is disarming in the same way Lewis’s was.”

“With few make-up effects – Lewis was born with almost no chin, and rheumatoid arthritis caused a withering of her small frame – Hawkins, will surely be able to do justice to the role, both outwardly and inwardly.”

I’m sure there’s a compliment in there somewhere.

In any event, Sean Bean, whose acting credits include “Lord of the Rings,” “Game of Thrones,” and “Scarlett,” the uber-stinky TV mini-series sequel to David O. Selznick’s “Gone With The Wind,” will play Everett Lewis, Maud’s fish-peddling boss and – later – husband.

In 2012, one of Lewis’s painting, “A View of Sandy Cove,” was sold at auction for more than $20,000.