Lindsay Lohan ‘to play Deep Throat porn star’

In what the gossip sites are seeing as delicious casting, Hollywood's number one "wild child" actress Lindsay Lohan is to portray the notorious 1970s porn star Linda Lovelace in a new biopic.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the producer hopes to announce Lohan's role at the upcoming Cannes film festival.

Lovelace shot to international fame when she starred in the 1972 porno movie Deep Throat, playing a young woman with an extraordinary appetite for fellatio. The film was the subject of bannings and court cases on both sides of the Atlantic, and yet became one of the highest-grossing films of all times because of late-night cinema screenings and home video sales.

The plot was simple: Lovelace's character, dissatisfied with her sex life, goes to see a doctor who discovers her clitoris is in the wrong place - at the back of her throat. He proceeds to show her how to make the most of her problem, as do several other men - and that's about it.

What made Lovelace - real name Linda Susan Boreman - interesting was that she later denounced the film and became an anti-pornography activist. She claimed she had been forced into her porn career by a sadistic first husband. She eventually died in a car crash in 2002.

The film of her life - titled Inferno - will delve into the "difficult stuff she went through and overcame," producer Wali Razaqi told the Los Angeles Times.

As for his choice of Lohan to play the lead, Razaqi said: "We've all thought that Lindsay would be a great choice for a while now, and we're all convinced that she is going to do it. For at least a year, the director [Matthew Wilder] and I have gone back and forth imagining how awesome of a performance she could give if she was in the movie."

Whether Lohan has actually agreed to play the role is a moot point: US media have been unable to get confirmation from her agent or manager.

But Razaqi was confident he would be able to announce her participation when Cannes opens later this month. "I would say it's probably one of the most challenging roles any actor could play - and not because of the sexual content, necessarily - but more because she was so battered and beat up emotionally, that I think it's gonna take everything Lindsay has to really be able to pull it off.

"Not that Lindsay's life is similar in any way - but she's been through a lot of ups and downs. A lot of times you're loved and then you're hated, and I think she can relate to those emotions and feelings." ·