Scarlett's Royal scandal

Although she's friendly with Prince Harry, this shocker doesn't involve him.

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• What a difference a day makes, Scarlett

Actually, it's about something that happened centuries ago, during the reign of Henry VIII.

She will portray Mary Boleyn, who had two children with the much-married monarch.

"As far as we know, he never proposed to Mary. Instead he went and wed her sister Anne," said Scarlett of the role she'll play in The Other Boleyn Girl.

She'll star with Eric Bana and Natalie Portman, and top British actors David Morrissey and Eddie Redmayne.

There had been a row because two American actresses would play major British characters. "The three foreign actors will be using English accents," Scarlett insisted. "I'll take away the eyebrows and the make-up and you won't notice I'm American.

"I'm a bit scared about it, because it's such a melodramatic tale," Scarlett told me yesterday in Venice, where she was launching murder thriller The Black Dahlia at the Film Festival.

That film's also a period piece, though set in Los Angeles in 1947, with Scarlett playing a housewife who tries to hide a tragic and sordid past.

"She's in a relationship totally starved of passion and when she finally gets what she wants, she does it right there on the kitchen table," the actress told me.

The person she "does it" with is played by Josh Hartnett, who narrates the picture.

The two actors fell in love while filming, but kept their romance secret for months, and Scarlett believes she'll jinx their relationship if she talks about it.

She will head to London for rehearsals on The Other Boleyn Girl in a couple of weeks for the three-month shoot.

"London's my second favourite city, after New York," she told me.