Christopher Eccleston to star in biopic of swimming champion

By Express News Service

Christopher Eccleston is the new cast addition of Disney+’s Young Woman and the Sea, an upcoming biopic about swimming champion Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle. The film also stars Daisy Ridley as the first woman ever to swim across the English Channel.

Inspired by Glenn Stout’s book of the same name, Young Woman and the Sea chronicles the daring journey of Gertrude Ederle a.k.a Trudy (Ridley), the first woman to ever swim across the English Channel in 1926. The daughter of a German butcher from Manhattan, Ederle was a competitive swimmer who won gold in the 1924 Olympics when she decided to attempt crossing the channel.

She undertook the feat after first swimming 22 miles from Battery Park in New York to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, setting a record that stood for 81 years. She contracted with two newspapers and sold her story, thereby financing her quest.

Besides Eccleston and Ridley, the film’s cast also includes Tilda Cobham-Hervey of Hotel Mumbai-fame and Stephen Graham, who was seen in The Irishman. The film is currently in production, which means the rest of the cast will be revealed soon.

The script of Young Woman and the Sea is signed by longtime Disney contributor Jeff Nathanson of The Lion King-fame. The biopic is helmed by Kon-Tiki-director Joachim Rønning, with Jerry Bruckheimer and Chad Oman as producers.

There’s no release date for Young Woman and the Sea yet. Eccleston has an International Emmy Award as Best Actor for the British anthology series Accused. Other major roles in Eccleston’s career include Matt Jamison in HBO’s supernatural drama series The Leftovers and Malekith in Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Thor: The Dark World.