Matt Damon to star as rugby captain in Mandela film

Johannesburg (ANTARA News/dpa) - Matt Damon will star as the captain of South Africa's 1995 World Cup-winning rugby team in a film to be directed by Clint Eastwood about Nelson Mandela and the transformative effect of the sporting win, weekend newspapers reported in South Africa.

Damon will star as Springbok ex-captain Francois Pienaar and Morgan Freeman will play Mandela in the film adaptation of a yet-to-be-released book by British journalist and author John Carlin entitled Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation.

Freeman, who had the idea for the film and brought Eastwood and Damon on board, has described the Mandela role as the "the role of his life."

Pienaar admitted to the Times his wife was especially "pleased" the star of blockbusters such as the Bourne Identity and The Talented Mr Ripley had been chosen to play him.

The Springboks' World Cup victory at home a year after the country's first democratic elections is seen as a defining moment in the history of post-apartheid South Africa.

The image of then president Mandela clad in a Springboks jersey presenting the Webb Ellis trophy to Pienaar became a symbol of new-found unity in the "rainbow nation", given rugby's association with the white minority.

Filming of the movie, which covers the turbulent period between 1985 to 1995 according to Carlin, is set to begin next year, the Times reported. end (*)