Leonardo DiCaprio smuggling diamonds?

'The Aviator' star has been cast in African thriller 'The Blood Diamond'.

Jun 29 2005

Leonardo DiCaprio is to play a diamond smuggler in an upcoming film from 'The Last Samurai' director Ed Zwick.

DiCaprio, who is currently working on Martin Scorsese's 'Infernal Affairs' remake 'The Departed', will film 'The Blood Diamond' from a script by Zwick and screenwriter Marshall Herskovitz.

Set in Sierra Leone in 1999, when civil war was tearing the country apart, the 'Titanic' star will play a criminal who specialises in the sale of 'conflict diamonds', so-called because they are used to finance terrorists and rebellions.

His character then has a change of heart when he crosses paths with a local farmer whose son has joined an army of child soldiers.

The film is due to lens sometime next year, although it is unclear whether cameras will roll before or after DiCaprio stars in an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's 'For Whom the Bell Tolls'.

• 
•