West End debut for 'Ally McBeal'

She rose to stardom playing Ally McBeal - the skinniest, ditsiest and most romantically frustrated woman in legal history.

Now Calista Flockhart is poised to become the next Hollywood star to make her London stage debut.

She is in "final negotiations" with Sonia Friedman - the increasingly influential producer who lured Madonna to the West End - to come to the capital early next year to star as Anna Christie, a former prostitute in search of redemption.

The play, also called Anna Christie, was written by New York playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1920, and is a dark, serious drama. It may not sound like the best role for a woman who made her name in a sitcom but Flockhart served a long apprenticeship acting in regional theatres in Louisville, Chicago and Houston.

It was only recently, however, that the 38-year-old had a first Broadway role, as Laura in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie.

All being well, Flockhart may well arrive in London with her equally famous paramour, 61-year-old Harrison Ford, on her arm.

Ford met the actress at the Golden Globes ceremony last year, after leaving his second wife Melissa Mathison. He has said of Flockhart: "I am in love. From the moment we met, things felt right."