For a few years now, ten-time Grammy winning pop megastar Billie Eilish has been dipping her toes further and further into the world of cinema. The ‘Ocean Eyes’ singer-songwriter has bagged two Academy Awards for her musical contributions to No Time To Die and Barbie, appeared (albeit as herself) in both the The World’s A Little Blurry doc and James Cameron’s 3D concert film Hit Me Hard And Soft: The Tour, and made her acting debut proper in Prime Video series The Swarm in 2023. Now, per Deadline‘s reporting, Eilish is getting ready to dive into her first major movie role — and it’s a biggie.
According to the trade, Eilish is in final negotiations to play lead character Esther Greenwood in Oscar winning Women Talking writer-director Sarah Polley’s next movie, an adaptation of American writer and poet Sylvia Plath’s only novel, The Bell Jar. Over the past two decades, multiple attempts have been made to bring Plath’s autofictional book to life on the big screen, including one take that would’ve starred 10 Things I Hate About You‘s Julia Stiles and another that Kirsten Dunst was preparing to direct Dakota Fanning in back in 2017 — but neither ultimately worked out. The struggle to adapt The Bell Jar probably isn’t helped by the fact that while it’s an undisputed literary masterwork from its author, it is also both A) a painful and almost relentlessly bleak fictionalised account of Plath’s own descent into mental illness and struggles with depression, and B) a book that cannot be divorced from the context that its release was very swiftly followed by Plath’s suicide at the age of just 30 in 1963.
Given Eilish’s proclivity for combining beautiful vocals and lyrical imagery with emotionally raw, at times radically confessional songwriting, it isn’t impossible to see the line of thinking that could lead both her and Polley to thinking she’d be a strong match for Plath stand-in Esther Greenwood. And given Polley’s ability to make really depressing material still cinematically engaging and engrossing without compromising on the emotional weight of the narrative at hand, if someone could make The Bell Jar palatable to a modern audience then surely Sarah Polley is that person. And if nothing else, maybe we’ll get a banger Billie Eilish soundtrack out of the whole endeavour either way, Charli xcx x Wuthering Heights style. Fingers crossed!
