FRENCH actress Audrey Tautou, the slight, dark-haired star of “The Da Vinci Code,” will play fashion visionary Coco Chanel in a new French movie.

French director Anne Fontaine told Le Film Francais movie journal that she is working on a tale about Chanel before she became famous, and that Tautou would star.

“I wanted to follow the interior path of this young woman who was poor, without education, but who had an uncommon personality that was ahead of her time,” Fontaine said Saturday. Shooting will start in early 2008.

Besides Fontaine’s film, two other Coco Chanel projects are in the works. Director Daniele Thompson is in the early stages of a biopic, and William Friedkin (“The Exorcist”) is working on a film about Chanel’s relationship with composer Igor Stravinsky.

Actress Marina Hands, who played the title role in a recent French adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” is set to star in Friedkin’s film.

(SD-Agencies)