Kirsten wins a new friend

The lady has also been hard at work landing the 'girlfriend' role in the big screen version of Toby Young's infamous best-selling memoir How To Lose Friends And Alienate People.

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The actress, soon to be seen as Mary Jane Watson in Spiderman 3, has been in town having meetings with (I'm told) leading man Simon Pegg, of Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz fame, and checking out costumes.

The 24-year-old was much taken by Peter Straughan's screenplay.

Straughan's the British writer who has adapted Young's book about how he left The Modern Review after being lured to work in New York for Vanity Fair magazine.

It wasn't the best of times for Young, but the experience gave him a ton of wicked anecdotes which he shaped into a succesful memoir.

Straughan has fictionalised events, and names have been changed, to protect - if not exactly the innocent, then those with fragile egos.

Robert Weide, who made his name directing and producing the Larry David TV comedy show Curb Your Enthusiasm, will direct the film, which is being produced by influential producers Stephen Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen.

Woolley and Weide have both worked with Kirsten before: Woolley on Interview With The Vampire and Weide on the movie Mother Night, which he directed.

Kirsten will play Alison, who becomes involved with Pegg's character Sidney when they work together in New York. The movie will shoot on locations in London and Manhattan from late May.