Ross’s wife slammed for violent, Kick-Ass film

Just over a year since Jonathan Ross caused outrage with his obscene phone call to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs, his wife, Jane Goldman, is facing her own tabloid storm for her part in a new film which portrays a potty-mouthed, pre-teen assassin.

Kick-Ass, which Goldman wrote with director Matthew Vaughan, has already been attacked in the United States after graphic trailers for the film, which is rated 15, were shown on the internet. Producers are expecting a similar backlash in Britain when the film is released on March 31.

The character at the centre of the row is an 11-year-old superhero called Hit-Girl. In one scene she kills around 20 people in a minute, using gruesome techniques such as slicing people’s legs off and shooting bullets through a man's cheek. She also screams at her opponents: "Okay, you cunts, let's see what you can do now."

In another scene Hit-Girl, who is played by 13-year-old American actress Chloe Moretz, is punched by an adult. Moretz has described her character as "the ultimate assassin" who has been trained by her father since the age of four. "Think Jodie Foster, Natalie Portman and Uma Thurman rolled into one."

Kick-Ass is based on comics created by Mark Millar, a Scottish writer, and John Romita Jr, an American illustrator. Scenes from the film, which also features Nowhere Boy star Aaron Johnson, were shown in San Diego last July at an annual comic-book convention. The film only came to mainstream attention last week, however, when it received a front-page splash in the New York Times in an article about the film's R-rated trailers.

"These particular trailers are even worse than normal because they depict a child and so are more interesting to a child," said one of the film's critics, lawyer Nell Minow. "Isn't there a limit to what we can ask children to do on screen?"

Huffington Post film critic Scott Mendelson dismissed the row as a "manufactured controversy". He could be right - and maybe the row is diverting us from the most important question: is the film any good?

In the meantime, before the reviews come out, Goldman is steeling herself for the moral outrage erupting over the film. Asked by one American interviewer about the suitability of an 11-year-old saying "cunt", she replied: "I think that's the least of our worries." ·