Will Noomi Rapace play ‘Girl’ in the US remake?

Could Noomi Rapace, the Swedish actress who has been widely praised for her performance in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, be set for success in Hollywood as the star of the US version of the film?
 
It has been announced that the English-language remake will be directed by David Fincher, whose previous films include Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
 
With shooting due to start in the autumn, the focus is now on who will play the lead role of Lisbeth Salander, the tattooed computer hacker heroine. After seeing Rapace's turn in the original film version of author Stieg Larsson's best-selling novel, many fans of the film think she is irreplaceable. Times critic Wendy Ide said it was "hard to imagine an actress better suited" to the role.
 
There has already been speculation that the part will go to Carey Mulligan. However Girl is at least the third film that the An Education star has been linked to recently and Mulligan said this week that she had not been approached by the film's producers.
 
There is also said to be pressure on Fincher to cast an unknown for the lead role. Yet even if this is the case, Rapace (above left) would still fit the bill.

Before playing Salander, she was little known in her home country Sweden where she had appeared in just a handful of art films and stage productions. And given the fact that the Swedish-language version has not exactly stormed the US box office since it opened there on March 19, Rapace is still largely unknown to American audiences despite her brilliant performance.
 
Aside from the critical acclaim and Rapace's suitability for the role, there is a precedent for an actress appearing in both the original film and the English-language version.
 
Penelope Cruz was already an established film actress in Spain when she played the lead female role in Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 film Abre los ojos ('Open Your Eyes') about a rich man who finds the love of his life (Cruz) just before he has a disfiguring car accident.

But it was only when she took the same role in Cameron Crowe's 2001 US version - renamed Vanilla Sky - and began a romance with the film's leading man, Tom Cruise, that she was thrust into the Tinseltown spotlight.
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