Kidman to play the first man to have a sex change

Nicole Kidman is to play the first man to have a sex change in a film inspired by the true story of Danish painter Einar Wegener, who underwent several operations in 1930 to become a woman.

Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, who directed last year's cult vampire movie Let the Right One In, will make The Danish Girl. The film's script is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by the American writer David Ebershoff, published in 2000.

Wegener was already something of a sensation in Europe as a transsexual before he underwent surgery in Berlin in 1930 and took the name Lili Elbe.

'Lili' had surfaced around 20 years earlier when Wegener's wife, the fashion illustrator Gerda Gottlieb Wegener Porta, asked him to stand in for an absentee model. Einar donned stockings and heels so Gerda could finish her painting, and, after that, modelled regularly for his wife while wearing women's clothing. The King of Denmark invalidated the Wegeners' marriage in October 1930.

Lili Elbe died aged 49 in 1931, after complications following a fifth operation in which doctors attempted to transplant a uterus into her body. Elbe had hoped to become a mother, after accepting a proposal of marriage.

Elbe was thought to be intersexual, with both male and female organs found in her body during surgery - similar to the South African athlete Caster Semenya, if recent reports by the Sydney Morning Herald are to be believed.