HOLLYWOOD COUPLE

HOLLYWOOD - Real life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly are to play man and wife on the big screen in a Charles Darwin biopic.

Bettany will play Darwin and Connelly will take on the role of the English naturalist's wife Emma in director Jon Amiel's Creation.

The movie, based on a book written by Darwin's great-great-grandson Randal Keynes, chronicles the scholar's early years, as he struggles to cope with the loss of a child.

Jeremy Northam and Atonement star Benedict Cumberbatch have also signed up for the project, which will be partly filmed on location at Down House in Kent, England, where the Darwins actually lived, according to Daily Variety.

The film's release will coincide with the bicentenary of Darwin's birth in 2009.

This will be the second time Bettany and Connelly have worked together, they met and fell in love on the set of 2001's A Beautiful Mind.