Kirsten Goes to Iraq

Dunst to play relief worker in biopic

Kirsten Goes to Iraq

by Willow Green |
Published on

Following Elizabethtown, Kirsten Dunst is hooking up with Paramount again to put her powers of sweetness to a decidedly more sobering use.

The adorably blonde one will play Marla Ruzicka, a 28-year-old American relief worker, who was killed in Iraq in April by a suicide bomber. Ruzicka and her driver died when a bomb crashed into a security convoy they were trailing.

Ruzicka founded the Campaign for Innocent Victims of Conflict, an organisation which raised $28 million to assist casualties of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like many relief workers, she fought tirelessly to get reparations for the many civilian casualties in those countries, but her dynamic attitude ensured she made it into public consciousness.

The rights to Ruzicka’s life story were sold the summer before she died and Ruzicka herself had planned to collaborate on a book about her life. A number of pages were produced, but it’s not known if they’ll be used to script the film, which Lorene Scafaria (The Mighty Flynn, Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist) is set to write.

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