Jamie Bell joins Shia LaBeouf for Lars von Trier’s erotic film

British actor Jamie Bell has signed up to Lars von Trier’s new erotic film project, which already boasts Stellan Skarsgård, Connie Nielsen, Nicole Kidman, Shia LaBeouf, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe.

Von Trier’s movie project – The Nymphomaniac – will be split into two standalone films. The films will trace the sexual progress of a woman from her youth to the age of 50, with each receiving a milder cut and more explicit cut. Gainsbourg was confirmed as playing the woman during the summer, while the latest casting news has just been revealed by the Hollywood Reporter. Bell, 26 – who made his film debut playing the eponymous role in Billy Elliot (2000) – starred as Tintin in Steven Spielberg’s 2011 motion-capture movie The Adventures of Tintin. Many other films between the two have included The Chumscrubber and Peter Jackson’s King Kong (both 2005), Hallam Foe (2007) and Jumper (2008). Earlier this month, LaBeouf suggested that the controversial sex scenes would be carried out for real by the actors themselves. “[It’s] what you think it is […] there’s a disclaimer at the top of the script that basically says we’re doing it for real. Everything that is illegal, we'll shoot in blurred images. Other than that, everything is happening,” the Transformers actor said a couple of weeks ago. However, according to NME, the films’ producers have now confirmed that "the sex scenes will be performed ‘with the help of body doubles and visual effects” [with] the most explicit sequences [performed by] porn actors”. However, LaBeouf is not shy of stripping off in front of the camera: earlier this year, the 26-year-old actor appeared nude in the music video that accompanied Sigur Rós's “Fjögur Píanó”. Describing The Nymphomaniac as “hardcore pornographic”, the Hollywood Reporter reports that, “Gainsbourg will star as Joe, a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac; Skarsgård [as] Seligman, an old, charming bachelor who finds [her] beaten up in an alley […] takes her home to care for her, [where] Joe recounts to him the story of her erotic life, from birth to the age of 50.” The film will be produced by Louise Vesth for von Trier’s Zentropa Entertainments. It is a co-production with Bettina Brokemper, Zentropa International; Marianne, Slot Machine; and Bert Hamelinck, Caviar Productions.