Ruby Films, the British production company behind Jane Eyre and Tamara Drewe, has optioned Your Voice In My Head, a memoir by Los Angeles-based screenwriter Emma Forrest. Then aged 22, Forrest tried to kill herself before being saved by a New York–based psychiatrist who was secretly dying of cancer. It’s Good Will Hunting meets Girl, Interrupted and “it will make a brilliant film,” Ruby Films boss Alison Owen tells me. But the elephant in the room is that Your Voice In My Head is also about Forrest’s ex-lover, actor Colin Farrell. Never named in the book (he’s referred to only as “GH” – ‘Gypsy Husband’’, she and Farrell were together when she was writing it. She warned him there was going to be a lot of Brit tabloid interest in her book and offered Farrell the chance to read it before publication. He declined. It’s not clear if he now knows the book is being made into a film. It’s not the first time she’s used Farrell for subject matter. Following the break-up of their year-long relationship, she wrote Liars (A-E) about him and other actor boyfriends. It focuses on a woman who’s so swept up by President Obama’s supposedly perfect marriage that she travels across America to the inauguration and stops off along the way asking old boyfriends why they broke up with her. Scott Rudin and the old Miramax bought the script for Richard Linklater to direct, and now Forrest says Rudin wants the project back.

The Other Press is due to publish Your Voice In My Head in the U.S. on May 1st. Forrest was something of an infant prodigy. She had her first newspaper story published at 13, wrote a music column for the prestigious The Sunday Times at aged 15, and published her first novel at 21. Then came the depression, the self-harming, and the suicide attempt. She frets that having been so open about her unhappy past might affect her new Hollywood career as a screenwriter penning scripts for Paramount, Universal, and Film4. It’s not the first time she’s used Farrell for subject matter either. She wrote Liars (A-E) in just 3 days following the breakup of their yearlong relationship. “But it’s not just about Colin, I’ve had lots of other actor boyfriends too,” she says. Liars A-E follows a girl who’s so swept up by President Obama’s supposedly perfect marriage to Michelle that she travels across America to the inauguration. She stops off along the way asking her old boyfriends why they broke up with her. Scott Rudin and Miramax bought the script for Richard Linklater to direct. Rudin is trying to buy the rights back.