Shirley MacLaine as Coco Chanel

| Posted Mar 17th 2008 1:12PM by Tiffany Neal
Filed under: Style in the media

Last year, Variety reported that Shirley MacLaine would be playing Coco Chanel in an upcoming biopic that would be airing on LifetimeTV this fall. The miniseries will chronicle Chanel's later years returning to Paris, after exiling herself in Germany and Switzerland during World War II.

Well, W magazine has obtained the first picture of Shirley MacLaine as Mademoiselle Coco Chanel. In the photo, Shirley has temporarily hidden her fire engine red locks under a brunette wig and wears the iconic pearls and tweed suit that Coco made fashionable in the 20s.

According to the fashion magazine, MacLaine took the role because of some advice an old friend once gave her -- the one and only Audrey Hepburn: "When we worked together, she said to me, 'You should think about doing Coco Chanel when you're older,'" recalls MacLaine. "That was in my 20s. I said, 'You should do Coco Chanel.' She said, 'No. You.' I've thought about it all that time, and then this came up. I couldn't believe it."

Meanwhile, the French actress Audrey Tautou is playing Coco in an upcoming Chanel feature-length film.

Tags: coco chanel, CocoChanel, lifetime channel, LifetimeChannel, shirley maclaine, ShirleyMaclaine, w magazine, WMagazine