Lily James Starring as Swimmer Gertrude Ederle in ‘Young Woman and the Sea’

Paramount and Jerry Bruckheimer have tapped Lily James to portray Gertrude Ederle in a movie about the first woman to swim across the English Channel.

Bruckheimer is producing and Jeff Nathanson is adapting the script from Glenn Stout’s book “Young Woman and the Sea,” which chronicles Ederle’s 1926 swim across the 21 mile stretch of water at the age of 20. Nathanson will exec produce.

Ederle took up distance swimming after she had won a gold medal and two bronzes in the 1924 Olympics by swimming 22 miles from Battery Park in New York to Sandy Hook, N.J. Ederle began her Channel crossing at Cap Gris-Nez in France and came ashore at Kingsdown, Kent, 14 hours and 34 minutes later — the fastest time ever for a crossing.

Ederle was greeted with a ticker-tape parade in New York City when she returned home, and played herself in the movie “Swim Girl, Swim.”

Read Variety

Photo by Gage Skidmore