All-Star Cast For Billie Eilish-Led ‘The Bell Jar’ Adaptation Revealed

Billie Eilish will be surrounded by an all-star cast when she makes her feature film acting debut in director Sarah Polley’s anticipated adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel The Bell Jar. According to Variety, two-time Oscar winner Eilish will play the main character Esther Greenwood in the big screen version of Plath’s semi-autobiographical book about an aspiring writer juggling a magazine summer internship in New York as she struggles with anxiety and societal expectations on women of the 1950s.

The only novel written by Plath, who died by suicide a month after the book was released in the U.K., was first adapted for the screen in 1979, with several stalled attempts to reboot it for the cinema over the past two decades as vehicles for Julia Stiles and Dakota Fanning. Variety reported that production has wrapped on the movie that Polley (Women Talking) directed from her own screenplay.

In addition to Eilish, the cast will reportedly feature Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan playing Esther’s mother, Mrs. Greenwood, as well as Danielle Deadwyler (P-Valley) playing Esther’s psychiatrist, Dr. Nolan, The Studio‘s Ike Barinholtz as wealthy N.Y. radio host Lenny, Heated Rivalry star Connor Storrie as blind date from hell Marco and Dylan Hawco (Youngblood) as Esther’s first boyfriend, Buddy Willard.

The cast for the Focus Features film will also include Lily Taylor (To the Bone) as Jay Cee, the editor of Ladies’ Day magazine, where Esther is hired as an intern, Ella Beatty (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You) as old friend Joan and Maggie Kuntz (The Gilded Age) as Doreen, a fellow intern and Esther’s best friend in N.Y.

Though the adaptation marks Eilish’s first movie role, she has dabbled in acting before. In 2023 she made her acting debut in an episode of Donald Glover and Janine Nabers’ Amazon Prime limited series Swarm. She also has two Oscars on the shelf already, both for Best Original Song, first in 2022 for the James Bond theme song “No Time to Die” and again in 2024 for the Barbie movie ballad “What Was I Made For?”

No release date has been announced for the film yet.