Rhys Ifans set for disc jockey role

CARDIFF, Wales, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- Welsh actor Rhys Ifans is teaming up with director Richard Curtis on a new movie about a British pirate radio station in the 1960s, a cast member says.

Ifans and Curtis, director of romantic comedy hits such as "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Bridget Jones," will team for the first time since Ifans made a big impression in Curtis's 1999 hit "Notting Hill," the Western Mail reported Monday.

To be called "The Boat That Rocked," it's to start filming in March. Fellow cast member Bill Nighy told the newspaper he and Ifans, along with veteran actor Kenneth Branagh, will play disc jockeys on Radio Caroline, an unlicensed offshore station on a boat that provided British baby boomers their first exposure to an all-rock radio format in the 1960s.

"(The movie) has no other purpose but to make you laugh out loud and play all those great old records from artists like the Beatles, the Stones and Diana Ross," Nighy told the Mail.

Ifans, who previously starred in a number of critically acclaimed independent movies, gained worldwide recognition in "Notting Hill" as Hugh Grant's strange roommate Spike.