The film premiered in the official selection at this year’s Cannes, although was not in competition. US outfit Focus Features has already taken worldwide distribution and sales rights to Agora outside Spain.

The ambitious historical drama tells the story of a love triangle between astronomer Hypatia (Weisz), Davus (Max Minghella) and Orestes (Oscar Isaac), and is set in 4th century Alexandria during the conflicts between the Pagans and the Christians.

Fernando Bovaira and Simon de Santiago’s Mod Producciones co-produce alongside Telecinco Cinema, the film arm of Spanish broadcaster Telecinco, and Amenabar’s own company Himenoptero.

Amenabar’s previous films The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro), starring Javier Bardem, and The Others (2001), starring Nicole Kidman, took $26m and $21m, respectively at the Spanish box office.

Source: Screen International

The Oscar-winning beauty says she gets fed up with having to check her Blackberry and mobile phone all the time.

“I would have enjoyed no email and no Blackberries,” Weisz explains. “Email is just becoming like an albatross around your neck. You could spend your life referring to emails and cell phones.

“We are always just in contact with each other. In that period with the quiet and time to reflect, everything moved at a much slower pace, and I find that very attractive. This isn’t real for me.”.

Agora, which also star British actor Max Minghella, hits movie theaters in December.

Meanwhile, Weisz, 39, has called for a ban on actors using Botox.

“Acting is all about expression; why would you want to iron out a frown?” Rachel said in a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar magazine.

“It should be banned for actors, as steroids are for sportsmen.”

Source: Showbiz Spy

She explained to Britain’s Harper’s Bazaar magazine: “Sometimes the paparazzi, on the lookout for Tom Cruise who lives nearby, trickle onto my street, take a few pictures of me, and disappear. But I never feel hounded. I am really not on that level of fame. I go on the subway and I can walk my son Henry to school.

“I have never had a problem, except maybe briefly when I won the Oscar and gave birth to Henry in quick succession. Then suddenly everyone was interested. Having those lenses coming up towards you when you’re holding this little bundle in your arms is frightening.”

The British actress – who has a three-year-old son, Henry, with her partner of eight years, ‘The Wrestler’ director Darren Aronofsky – is about to return to her native country, where she will star in a new London West End production of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’.

Rachel, 38, is thrilled about returning to the UK.

She said: “I love the way girls in London dress, it’s so different to the American ‘blow-dry and immaculate grooming’ thing. I am pretty much in a constant state of mourning for London when I’m not there. I miss a chat.”

Source: iCelebZ.com

Click on thumbnails for full size pictures

Rachel Weisz thinks Nicole Kidman is to acting what Barry Bonds is to baseball.

At least that’s what ‘The Mummy’ star tells the August issue of the UK edition of Harper’s Bazaar.

“It should be banned for actors, as steroids are for sportsmen,” Weisz says of Botox. “Acting is all about expression; why would you want to iron out a frown?”

The London-born Oscar winner (you can tell she’s from there because she uses the word “sportsmen”) also says she’s much more comfortable back in jolly old England than she is in appearance-obsessed America.
“I love the way girls in London dress; it’s so different to the American “blow-dry and immaculate grooming” thing,” she says.

But she is comfortable with traditional female roles. Very traditional.

Married to director Darren Aronofsky, she says “I am cave-woman to his man — man.”

You can read the full interview in Harper’s Bazaar UK – if you are in England!

Source: FOXNews.com