The following article appeared today on www.mtv.com... "The Bell Jar" tolls for Julia Stiles by Shawn Adler She’s trapsed the globe with super-spy Jason Bourne, but Julia Stiles’ greatest journey is the one she’ll soon be making inside her own head, the 26-year-old told MTV News, as she gears up to play Esther Greenwood in the film adaptation of the classic Slyvia Plath novel “The Bell Jar.” Sometimes described by readers as a “female ‘Catcher in the Rye,’” “The Bell Jar” follows Greenwood as she experiences massive, clinical melancholia, through commitment to a mental hospital, electroshock therapy, and several suicide attempts. Ask most casual students of English literature and they’ll tell you “The Bell Jar” is one thing above all – effing depressing. “I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s depressing at all. It is ABOUT depression,” Stiles argued. “But I think that Sylvia Plath writes with such awesome, beautiful, vivid imagery that is so perfect for film, that it’s kind ...

from Reuters, Wednesday 25 April 2007: Sylvia Plath novel rings "Bell" for Stiles By Gregg Goldstein NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Julia Stiles will star in and produce an adaptation of Sylvia Plath's autobiographical novel "The Bell Jar." The actress and her representatives at Creative Artists Agency spent two years optioning rights to the coveted project from French producers StudioCanal, and closed the deal Friday. The 1950s-era drama centers on young book editor Esther Greenwood (Stiles), who grows troubled by the social trappings of her time and slowly descends into mental illness.Principal photography is tentatively expected to begin in early 2008. Also producing are indie firms Plum Pictures and Killer Films. A 1979 version starred Marilyn Hassett. Since then, rights to the only novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet (published around the time of her suicide in 1963) have been held by several parties. Gwyneth Paltrow starred in a 2003 biopic of Plath...