Jude Law breaks away from pretty boy roles by playing a trannie

Jude Law, the British star whose good looks often land him pretty boy roles - Lord Alfred Douglas in the film Wilde, for example - will appear as a cross-dressing supermodel in his next movie. The film, called Rage, a murder mystery set in the New York fashion world, also stars Dame Judi Dench and supermodel Lily Cole, who plays a film starlet called Lettuce Leaf.

However, the film's director, Sally Potter, realises that most of the critics will be focusing on the 36-year-old Law's attempts to break free of his usual typecasting.

Writing on her blog, Potter said: "Jude, whose beauty has sometimes been held against him as an actor, made the courageous decision to accept the role and took on a kind of hyper-beauty for this persona, a 'female' beauty which gradually unravels as the story unfolds.

"Strangely, the more he became a 'she', coiffed and made-up, the more naked was his performance. There was great strength in his willingness to make himself vulnerable."

The film is set over seven days and concerns a young blogger called Michelangelo who shoots behind-the-scenes interviews on his mobile phone at a New York fashion house. When a model dies on the catwalk, Michelangelo's mobile phone footage becomes evidence. Rage will be premiered at the Berlin Film Festival next week.

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