HaveUHeard

Euphoria bombshell Sydney Sweeney has been cast as the lead in the new movie of the French comic book Barbarella.

Barbarella, an outer space sexpot, was iconically played by Jane Fonda in a 1968 cult classic directed by her first husband Roger Vadim.

Now Sydney, cementing her pinup credentials, will be starring in and executive producing a new film about the character, according to Deadline.

New generation: Euphoria bombshell Sydney Sweeney has been cast as the lead in the new movie of the French comic book Barbarella, previously adapted with Jane Fonda (left)

Roger Vadim was a famous French filmmaker with a prodigious string of wives beginning with Brigitte Bardot, whom he directed multiple times.

‘He was incredibly sexy and he could charm anyone,’ Jane told PeopleTV in 2018. ‘I mean, before me it was Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Annette Stroyberg, and so forth. And I was young and I wanted him to teach me how to be a woman – so he taught me to be a female impersonator.’

Jane, the third of his six wives, revealed in her documentary Jane Fonda In Five Acts that she was reluctant to take the saucy role of Barbarella. 

Painfully insecure about her body to the point she had a history of bulimia, she found herself unable to ‘relate’ to the part of a sexually confident space traveler.

Sensation: Now Sydney, cementing her pinup credentials, will be starring in and executive producing a new film about the character, according to Deadline

To add to her misgivings, she was aware that both Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren had been offered the role and rejected it.

However Roger, a diehard science fiction fan, leapt at the opportunity to combine the genre with sensuality and feature his wife in the lead.

The rollicking comedy sees Barbarella face off against a mad scientist with an ‘Excessive Machine’ that causes death by orgasm.

Her husband and director: Jane said of Roger Vadim (right) that ‘I was young and I wanted him to teach me how to be a woman – so he taught me to be a female impersonator’

Its opening credits are splashed over a montage of Jane doing what she called a ‘space striptease’ and then rolling around naked.

She was so nervous about the prospect of shooting the sequence that she got drunk on vodka in preparation for filming.

However a bat made its way in front of the camera, wrecking the scene and requiring a reshoot – with Jane by that point both drunk and hungover.

Heroine: The rollicking comedy sees Barbarella face off against a mad scientist with an ‘Excessive Machine’ that causes death by orgasm

As the decades rolled by she learned to love the movie, saying with a laugh: ‘You know, when it first came out, I was just becoming an activist and a feminist and I thought it wasn’t politically correct – and now I appreciate it because it’s not.’

Jane revealed during a BFI event a few years ago that she once pitched a sequel starring Angelina Jolie as her daughter.

As the original Barbarella, Jane would be in a ‘grandmother’ position leading a ‘team of women’ to rescue Angelina when she falls into the hands of the villain.

Dark side: Painfully insecure about her body to the point she had a history of bulimia, Jane found herself unable to ‘relate’ to the part of a sexually confident space traveler