A trio of US actresses have been cast as the most famous sisters of English literature - Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte.

The film will be the latest to feature Americans as English writers, following The Devil Wears Prada star Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen in this year's Becoming Jane and Renee Zellweger as Beatrix Potter in Miss Potter.

The actresses, announced today at the Cannes Film Festival, will be former Brokeback Mountain and Dawson's Creek star Michelle Williams, 26, The Village actress Bryce Dallas Howard, 26, and up-and-coming Evan Rachel Wood, 19.

Bronte will be directed and written by British filmmaker Charles Sturridge, who recently directed the Lassie remake.

The Bronte sisters created fantasy worlds for themselves while growing up as children in Yorkshire.

They created pseudonyms in their earlier works to get published.

Sturridge said: "My family come from Yorkshire and I grew up with five sisters, so this is a story I have always wanted to tell.

"We all remember the lost childhoods, but these amazing girls never abandoned them and applied the same unique and uncompromising daring to their work as adults."

Williams will play Jane Eyre author Charlotte (1816-1855), Dallas Howard has been cast as Emily (1818-1848), most famous for Wuthering Heights, and Rachel Wood plays The Tenant of Wildfell Hall author and the youngest of the Bronte sisters, Anne (1820-1849).

Charlotte Bronte, arguably the most talented of the three, died at the age of 39. Jane Eyre was published in 1847 and was an instant success.

Filming begins in September and the movie is expected to be released in 2009.

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