Cumming to step into Dali's shoes for 3D biopic

The 45-year-old Scottish actor has relished flamboyant roles on screen and stage, and the part of the great surrealist artist seems tailor-made for him.

Dali was as famous for his eccentric personal behaviour and long, twirly, waxed moustache as he was for any single work of art. He had a great sense of playfulness and had an impact on everything in western culture from painting to television comedy.

His painting The Persistence Of Memory, which features melting clocks, is one of the most famous in the world. But he did not restrict himself to paintings.

He created a telephone with a lobster as the handset, a sofa in the form of a pair of lips and the classic dream scene in Alfred Hitchcock's famous 1945 thriller Spellbound, which features eyes, scissors, playing cards, a faceless man and another man hiding behind a chimney.

Philippe Mora, the film's Australian writer-director, said that he considered Dali's life story to be just as incredible as his art.

The film, currently titled Dali 3D, begins with the artist semi-conscious in a hospital, where he overhears a doctor suggesting his life would make a great movie and it takes off from there.

"I want this to be the film that Dali would have wanted you to see," said Mora. "True to his outrageous sense of humour, it will be simultaneously a surreal parody of what the artist would have wanted you to experience, a kind of crazed, artistic Inspector Clouseau. With his muse and wife Gala in the mix, it's an extraordinary love story."

Cumming, who is originally from Aberfeldy in Perthshire, attained local celebrity status when he co-starred with Forbes Masson in the Scottish sitcom The High Life in 1995.

The film is expected to be shot in the summer, in Spain, the UK, the US and Australia. Dali's wife Gala will be played by Judy Davis, the Australian actress, who is best known for her starring role in A Passage To India.