Taye Diggs & Julia Stiles to Star in BETWEEN US Film

According to Deadline.com, stage veterans Julia Stiles and Taye Diggs are set to star in the upcoming big screen adaptation of off-Broadway play BETWEEN US. Filming will begin in May.

Stiles' first theatrical roles were in works by author/composer John Moran with the group Ridge Theater, in Manhattan's Lower East Side from 1993-1998. She later performed on stage in Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, in the summer of 2002 and appeared as Viola, the lead role in Shakespeare in the Park's production of Twelfth Night with Jimmy Smits. Reviewing the production, Ben Brantley of The New York Times saluted Stiles as "the thinking teenager's movie goddess" who put him in mind of a "young Jane Fonda."Stiles will play Jeannie in a production of Neil LaBute's Fat Pig directed by the playwright beginning in April 2011.

Diggs originated the role of the nasty landlord Benny in Jonathan Larson's Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning Rent. After Rent he appeared as Mr. Black alongside Idina Menzel's character of Kate in Andrew Lippa's off-Broadway production of The Wild Party. Diggs also played The Bandleader in the long-running Broadway revival of Chicago and temporarily filled in for Norbert Leo Butz (an original Rent standby) as the love interest Fiyero of Idina Menzel's Elphaba character in Wicked.  He is perhaps best known for his roles in the motion picture How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and the television series Private Practice.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos