Sarandon Reels in Rialto

ByABC News
December 14, 2000, 7:18 PM

December 14 -- Susan Sarandon as a sexy older woman seducing a younger man? Hmm, we can't quite picture such outlandish casting.

Seriously, the earthy 54-year-old actress whose younger on-screen partners include such stars as James Spader (White Palace), Stephen Dorff (the TV movie Earthly Possessions), and real-life companion Tim Robbins (Bull Durham) is in negotiations to star in the '50s-era film Rialto for indie director Lizzie Borden (Working Girls).

Sarandon would play a mysterious woman who has a tumultuous affair with a younger man who was in a prison camp during the Korean War, Variety reports. The woman and the art-house films she shows at her independent movie theater make her the target of communist suspicion in the Providence, R.I., community.

Rialto is based on a story by Christian Blackwood and director Borden. It's not to be confused with another in-development period film also sporting a popular movie theater name, Bijou, which may star Jim Carrey as an amnesiac, likewise in McCarthy-era America.