Jessica Chastain will take on one on the greatest roles for women in drama when she plays Miss Julie opposite Colin Farrell in a new film adaptation of the 1888 August Strindberg play. 

Directed by Norwegian actor and Ingmar Bergman collaborator Liv Ullman, this version of Miss Julie will be set in Northern Ireland, rather than in Strindberg’s Sweden, but you can still expect the themes of gender and class clashing. Chastain is not the first well-known actress to portray Miss Julie on screen; Saffron Burrows played the role in 1999 and Helen Mirren was the doomed aristocrat in a 1972 film version.

The news of Chastain’s casting comes after it was announced that Carey Mulligan would be following in Julie Christie’s footsteps by playing the lead role of Bathsheba Everdene in a Thomas Vinterberg-directed film adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd. And, of course, we all know that Mulligan is currently portraying The Great Gatsby’s Daisy Buchanan at a multiplex near you, a character Mia Farrow played in a 1974 film version of the novel.

Hollywood has a habit of revisiting the same great novels, scripts and plays every ten to 20 years, and it’s interesting to note the actors who step into the roles that were once occupied by a different generation of movie stars.

Click the gallery to see the roles that have been repeated more than one (Juliet, Elizabeth Bennett) and the actors who have played them (Claire Danes, Hailee Steinfeld; Jennifer Ehle, Keira Knightley).