Montreal actress Emily Hampshire is attached to Xavier Dolan’s fourth film, Letters to a Young Actor.

Hampshire, who has a cameo role in Dolan’s third film, Laurence Anyways, which is screening in Cannes, is to play the wife of an iconic actor.

But Dolan tells Playback Daily that it’s early days for his first English-language film project, which as yet has no script written, and will be partly shot in the U.S.

In addition, the ambitious Quebec director will need a big budget and an all-star cast to pull off Letters to a Young Actor, which has the movie industry as a backdrop.

And, as yet, Dolan is far less known in Los Angeles than he is in Quebec and France, where his films enjoy a strong following.

But while Letters to a Young Actor is a ways off from seeing the cameras roll, Dolan is already committed to writing Hampshire, a fellow Montrealer, into the script as its first cast member.

“Emily is sure to be in it, as she is a brilliant actress,” he says.