Imogen Poots has signed on to star in the Todd Fields-directed Beautiful Ruins based on Jess Walter’s bestselling novel, Deadline said.

Poots plays young actress Dee Moray who travels to Italy in 1962 during the filming of Cleopatra.

Fields is writing the screenplay with Walter and will produce with Cross Creek Pictures’ Brian Oliver and Tyler Thompson and Smuggler Films’ Patrick Milling Smith and Brian Carmody.

Casting is underway for the male leads with shooting set to begin in Italy in May.

Poots has a big year coming up with three films set to bow in 2014 — DreamWorks’ Need For Speed, FilmDistrict’s That Awkward Moment and Wildgaze Films’ A Long Way Down. She recently wrapped Peter Bogdanovich’s Squirrels To The Nuts opposite Owen Wilson. She’s also appeared in Jon Baird’s Filth, opposite James McAvoy, Yaron Zilberman’s A Late Quartet alongside Christopher Walken, Catherine Keener and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Michael Winterbottom’s The King Of Soho.