Natalie Portman is approaching the bench.

The 33-year-old actress is set to play Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the biopic “On the Basis of Sex,” The Times has confirmed. Deadline Hollywood first reported the news.

Marielle Heller, the filmmaker behind the Sundance hit “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” is in negotiations to direct the movie, which is to chronicle Ginsburg’s fight for equal rights on her way to becoming the second woman and sixth Jew to serve on the nation’s highest court. (Now 82 and still active, Ginsburg was appointed by then-President Bill Clinton in 1993).

The script for “On the Basis of Sex,” by Daniel Stiepleman, landed on 2014’s Black List, a subjective but much-watched ranking of the year’s best unproduced screenplays.


Portman hasn’t been seen in a major film since 2013’s “Thor: The Dark World,” but the Oscar-winning “Black Swan” star has a number of movies on the horizon, including Terrence Malick’s “Knight of Cups” and the western “Jane Got a Gun.” Her directorial debut, the Hebrew-language “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” is premiering at Cannes this month.

The jury is still out, though, on whether Portman will be able to top Kate McKinnon’s portrayal of “The Notorious RBG” on “Saturday Night Live.”

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