Steven Spielberg Needs 'Gifted' Child For Historic Drama: Ready to Be Discovered?

LOS ANGELES, CA — Is there a little boy in your life that has something special? Steven Spielberg needs a young boy to star in a historical drama he's directing about a 19th Century Jewish boy in Bologna, Italy, who is snatched from his family to be raised as a Christian.

Based on a 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara," the film details the struggle of the boy's parents to free their son. Their struggle becomes part of a larger political battle that pits the papacy against forces of Italian democracy.

Casting directors will be searching for a 6- to 9-year-old — "someone truly special, gifted, curious and intelligent with a mischievous streak" — to portray a Jewish and Italian boy in the film that will begin shooting in Europe in April. No accent is needed, they say.

Spielberg is famous for his work with young actors. He made Christian Bale famous when he cast him in 1987's "Empire of the Sun," a WWII drama centered on a little boy's survival in a Japanese work camp without his parents.

Amblin Entertainment has scheduled an open casting call in Los Angeles for Sunday, Jan. 29, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at American Jewish University's Colen Conference Hall, 15600 Mulholland Drive.

Academy Award winner Mark Rylance ("Bridge of Spies") will co-star in the historical drama based on the book by Pulitzer Prize winner David Kertzer, which was adapted for the screen by Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report. Photo by Georges Biard via Wikimedia Commons