French actress Juliette Binoche will play the role of Nobel literature laureate Pearl S. Buck in a film about her life, showbiz magazine Variety reported Monday.

The film, called "Pearl", will be financed by China Film Group and directed by Roxanne Messina Captor.

Filming is scheduled to begin next year in the Chinese province of Zhejiang, in the city of Shanghai and in Prague, Variety said.

Buck won the Pulitzer prize in 1931 for her novel "The Good Earth" about the hard life of Chinese peasants, and garnered the Nobel in 1938.

Buck spent much of her life in China, first as a missionary and then as a writer. She returned to the United States in 1934.

Binoche won an Oscar for her role as a nurse in the 1996 film "The English Patient".