Even though she is deep into awards season, Jennifer Lawrence has found her next project. JLaw will play Marita Lorenz, Fidel Castro’s lover, in the Marita biopic, according to Entertainment Weekly. When she was 19, Lorenz, a German-born American, had an affair with Castro in 1959, the same year Castro rose to power.
Lorenz, who is now 76, became pregnant by Castro, but she was forced into an abortion against her will. According to a Tico Times interview with Lorenz’s daughter Monica Mercedes Pérez Jiménez, Lorenz “was drugged in her last trimester and woke up with no child.” After this traumatic incident, Lorenz left Cuba, and in 1960, the CIA recruited her to kill Castro. The movie will be produced by Sony and will be written by Eric Warren Singer, who was the co-writer for American Hustle.
So far, there’s no word on who will play Castro, but in the past he has been portrayed by Demián Bichir, Enrico Lo Verso, and Michael Sorich on a few occasions.
Interestingly enough, this movie might not have come to pass if Castro had stuck with acting career. In the 40s, before the Cuban Revolution began, he was in Easy to Wed, Bathing Beauty, and Holiday In Mexico, according to Univision. At the 2:09 mark in the video below, Castro is the second dancer from the left.