Selena Gomez is heading to the Blue Bayou…
The 31-year-old Mexican American actress/singer will portray Linda Ronstadt in an upcoming biopic based on the superstar singer’s 2013 memoir Simple Dreams.
Gomez, who stars in and executive produces Hulu’s The Only Murders In The Building, gave credence to the months-old internet rumors about the project by posting a photo of the memoir as an Instagram Story. Rolling Stone later confirmed the casting.
In pre-production, the film is being co-produced by James Keach and Ronstadt’s longtime manager John Boylan.
Additional casting and release date have not been announced.
An unconfirmed report of Gomez’s involvement in the biopic surfaced last July, but the IG Story today moved the possibility into the definite.
Keach directed the 2020 film Linda and the Mockingbirds, a documentary chronicling a road trip undertaken by Ronstadt, Jackson Browne and a group of younger musicians to the Mexican town of Banámichi in the state of Sonora, the birthplace of Ronstadt’s grandfather.
Like Gomez, who has had a successful music and acting career, Ronstadt is of Mexican descent. Ronstadt wrote at length about her heritage in the 2013 memoir. The singer returned to the subject in the 2022 book Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands.
Despite her 2012 retirement following a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease – the diagnosis was revised seven years later to progressive supranuclear palsy, a degenerative disease similar to Parkinson’s that has left Ronstadt unable to sing – Ronstadt and her music have returned to the spotlight in recent months. Last year her 1970 recording of “Long Long Time” was featured prominently in an episode of The Last of Us, and trailers for Ryan Murphy’s upcoming FX series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans make heavy use of Ronstadt’s smash 1974 hit “You’re No Good.”
The 2019 documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, offered an in-depth retrospective of her life and career, featuring on-screen appearances by and interviews with Ronstadt and her many musical friends and colleagues, including Browne, Ry Cooder, Emmylou Harris, Don Henley, Kevin Kline, Dolly Parton, Bonnie Raitt and J.D. Souther.
If even a fraction of the many rockers and celebrities who’ve crossed paths with Ronstadt over the years make it into the biopic as characters, Hollywood will be very busy in coming months with actors vying for plum roles.