Now that her relationship with director Robert Rodriguez is finito, actress Rose McGowan isn’t going to be playing the Jane Fonda role in his remake of Barbarella. In fact, she’s now being tapped to play famed porn star Linda Lovelace in a new biopic. The part has been passed around to some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Angelina Jolie. Most recently, “House Bunny” actress Ana Faris had been offered the role and turned it down. Looks like Rose got the high visibility she needed out of her roles in Rodriguez’ “Grindhouse” films.

Could Rose McGowan wind up getting deep?

The talented, beautiful star of “Planet Terror” from the Robert Rodriguez part of “Grindhouse” and TV’s “Charmed” is considering joining the cast of “Inferno,” producer Brian Grazer’s film about legendary “Deep Throat” star Linda Lovelace.

I’m told that already cast are Bill Pullman as Hugh Hefner and Josh Lucas as Linda’s husband, Chuck Traynor, the one who got her into porn. First time writer-director Matthew Wilder will direct from his own script. I’m pretty sure he’s not the same Matthew Wilder who sang, “Nobody’s gonna break my stride…”

“Inferno” isn’t the first attempt at telling the story of the famed Deep Throat star. In past years, both Angelina Jolie and Meg Ryan were mentioned as being interested in the role.

The movie won’t just be about Deep Throat. Lovelace’s life was full of ups and downs. Born Linda Boreman, she wrote two bestselling memoirs, “Ordeal,” and “Out of Bondage.”

According to one bio, after Linda made “Deep Throat” in 1974, she became a feminist. She joined up with Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, and testified before Attorney General Ed Meese’s Commission on Pornography in 1986. Lovelace died in Denver on April 22, 2002, due to severe injuries in a car accident.

McGowan, meantime, is deservedly busy. She just filmed a bunch of episodes of “Nip/Tuck” and has three or four film projects ready to go since breaking up with Rodriguez. A planned remake of “Barbarella,” however, has thankfully been scotched.

[From Fox News]

Brian Grazer is a very powerful TV and film producer, with such credits at TV’s “Arrested Development,” “24″ and “Friday Night Lights” and films like “A Beautiful Mind” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” If he’s putting his considerable weight behind this film, it stands a good chance of being made- and being a hit. This role could make Rose McGowan an A-list status actress if she pulls it off. Playing a porn star sure boosted Mark Wahlberg’s career - it’s not out of the realm of possibilities. But the question is: will she put the moves on her director again?

Rose McGowan and her geek glasses are shown out to dinner at Madeo on 10/3/08. Credit: The Media Circuit/ Fame Pictures

Rose McGowan’s and director Robert Rodriguez have broken up, according to the New York Post. They met while filming Grindhouse in the spring of 2006, and got engaged this past October. The pair started their relationship while Rodriguez was still married to his wife of 16 years, with whom he has five children.x

Apparently their breakup had a lot to do with business. How romantic. Rodriguez was having trouble getting financing for his upcoming remake of Barbarella, in which McGowan was to star. In fact, she was the reason he couldn’t get enough funding.

Rose McGowan’s breakup with her fiancé, director Robert Rodriguez, could be good news for some other actresses, who could end up with the leading roles she was set to play in his movies. McGowan was hoping to star in at least three planned Rodriguez films - a remake of “Barbarella,” “Red Sonja” and “Woman in Chains!”

But sources say the couple, who we reported last October were engaged, have split, partly over the problems Rodriguez had finding financing for “Barbarella” - the 1968 cult classic in which Jane Fonda played a sexy space adven- turess - with McGowan in the title role.

McGowan, best known for her witchy role on TV’s “Charmed,” wasn’t thought to have enough box-office draw for the $70 million remake, especially after “Grindhouse” disappointed with about $25.4 million in domestic ticket sales.

“Too bad ‘Grindhouse’ didn’t gross $100 million. Then, maybe, ‘Barbarella’ would have gotten the green light,” said one source. “Instead, the moguls were saying, ‘We need a bigger star, a bigger name.’ ” Jessica Alba has been touted as a possible replacement.

[From the Daily News]

It sounds like McGowan and Rodriguez’s entire relationship was a great example of why you shouldn’t mix business and love. Rodriguez appeared to view McGowan as his muse, and seemed pretty willing to put all of his eggs in her basket, so to speak. I’ve never found her to be anything exceptional as an actress. It seems like their breakup may benefit everyone. A few other actresses will likely get a shot at McGowan’s roles, Rodriguez will get some better talent, and his ex-wife will probably be smugly satisfied.

Here’s Rose McGowan at the Neil George salon in Beverly Hills carrying her bulldog and wearing a cast on her foot on June 7th. Images thanks to WENN. Header of Robert Rodriguez and Rose McGowan at the amfAR Cinema Against AIDS event in France on May 23rd, 2007. Photographer Z.Tomaszewski; Image thanks to WENN.

Universal Studios have withdrawn from backing Barbarella because of the leading lady. If the movie is named after the character, the lead better be good. Unfortunately for directer Robert Rodriguez, not everyone agrees with his assessment of fiance/home wrecker Rose McGowan, and he now is looking for another studio to come up with $82 million to finance the film.

Rodriquez downplays the gossip, stating that the studio is tightening up everywhere. “Universal had initially signed on for $60 million,” he told the Transom, “but then when we were done with the script it wound up at closer to $82 million, and they had just financed a Will Ferrell movie that was a $130 million and they even cut that down to $100.”

In fact, Rodriguez asserts that McGowan’s screen tests were enthusiastically received by the suits. “They said, ‘What are we looking at?’” Mr. Rodriguez said. “She looks fantastic in the role…She was perfect for this part. She just has that daring look, a sort of classic sexiness that is also kind of futuristic.”

Comics2Film.com

There is a pretty big difference between keeping to the original budget, and pulling out of a project completely. And it seems to have come pretty quickly after Rodriguez announced non-box office draw Rose McGowan as the lead. After he left his wife and the mother of his five children to marry her.

The initial enthusiasm for McGowan’s screen tests could have just been studio BS, isn’t it basically an executive’s job to humour you to your face, then as soon as you leave the room come up with ways to cut costs while getting a more popular actress?

Actually, the whole Barbarella concept seems a bit crap - Rodriguez claims that the original budget for the film isn’t enough, as you don’t want it to look like the original too much. Why make it then? Why not come up with an exciting new adventure in space? Or even just an whole new concept for a film, I’m so tired of remakes.

McGowan and Rodriguez are shown at the Grindhouse premiere after party back in March.

Re-making Barbarella? This is surely going to put you in the naughty chair next to the guy who tried to remake King Kong. Robert Rodriguez is going to try, and he’s casting his girlfriend in the lead role. Which probably puts him in the naughty chair as he already has a wife!

A highly reliable source tells Elle.com exclusively that Rose McGowan is slipping into a fur bikini and major bouffant to take on the title role in the remake of Barbarella. Robert Rodriguez, who left his wife after falling for McGowan on the Grindhouse set, is directing and has cast his love in the part made famous by Jane Fonda. While the rumor mill placed everyone from Halle Berry to Kate Beckinsale and Nicole Kidman in the role of Queen of the Galaxy, it seems he’s found the perfect Barbarella in McGowan.

elle.com

Rose McGowan could make her big comeback in the film – not she ever really went away, it’s just it seems some people have found her unrecognisable.

McGowan, 34, has admitted to having plastic surgery for an eye injury related to a car accident. But casting skeptics suspect she has had much more done, and that it cost her the role.

“The studio felt like she was hard to recognize and worried that by the time the movie hit theaters, fans might not know who she was,” says our insider.

A rep for the actress said “she was not pursuing this role.”

NY Daily News

While I sympathise that someone who first became famous for dating Marilyn Manson may want to change their appearance, I actually think she hasn’t had any work done, certainly not enough to make her unrecognisable. She always looked pretty strange to me, even standing next to that weird goth type Manson.

Note by Celebitchy: Rodriguez and McGowan are now engaged, and he is in the process of a divorce. I think she had a lot of work done.