Nicole Kidman is about to take on a role unlike any other – playing a post-op transexual in The Danish Girl, with Charlize Theron playing her wife.

The Danish Girl is based on a 2000 best-selling novel, about real-life Danish husband/wife artists Einar and Greta Wegener.

Nicole Kidman will play Einar, a man who, in the 1920s, posed as a woman for his painter wife Greta (Theron).

When the portraits became popular, Greta encouraged Einar to dress as a woman regularly – and in 1931, he underwent a sex-change operation.