Madsen Moving Up and Up, Boards ‘Amelia’

In 2004, Virginia Madsen‘s career was flipped ‘Sideways‘ and has been headed in a pretty good direction ever since. The Oscar-nominated role marked a move for the actress from heroines in telefilms to leading ladies opposite some of Hollywood’s most respected actors. Projects that followed include Firewall opposite Harrison Ford, A Prairie Home Companion, The Astronaut Farmer with Billy Bob Thorton and The Number 23 opposite Jim Carrey. Madsen also recently starred in the short Cutlass alongside Dakota Fanning and Kurt Russell, which marked Kate Hudson‘s directorial premier.

Variety reports that the blonde beauty has signed on to co-star in Amelia, the Amelia Earhart biopic directed by Mira Nair and starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere. Swank, who is also exec producing, will be flying high as the aviatress herself, with Gere as her publisher-promoter husband George Putnam. Madsen will be playing Putnam’s first wife, Dorothy Binney. Putnam left Binney for Earhart and Binney went on to remarry three times. Binney was a wealthy and educated woman who had a twenty-year affair with a much younger man and traveled around the world. Amelia begins shooting in Canada and South Africa later this month.

Earlier this year Madsen launched a production shingle called Title IX Productions. One of the company’s first projects is the documentary I Know a Woman Like That, directed by Madsen’s Emmy-winning filmmaker mother, Elaine Madsen. The doc examines the lives of various extraordinary women between the ages of 64 and 94 and is currently in pre-production.

Madsen will appear in the IFC comedy Diminished Capacity, opposite Matthew Broderick, to be released in July of 2008. She will also star in the horror pic The Haunting in Connecticut, about a family haunted by demons in their home. The pic is currently in post-production and set to be released in 2008.