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Stage and screen star Shirley MacLaine will star opposite Jack Black, Matthew McCounaghey, and Rip Torn in director Richard Linklater's new dark comedy Bernie, according to published reports.

MacLaine will play a wealthy but unusual widow in Texas who strikes up an unlikely friendship with local mortician Bernie (played by Black) -- with unforeseen consequences. McConuaghey and Torn will play lawyers in the film.

MacLaine appeared early in her career on Broadway in Me and Juliet and The Pajama Game, and later appeared in three special engagements on the Great White Way. She won the Academy Award for Terms of Endearment and her many other films include Sweet Charity, Steel Magnolias, The Apartment, The Turning Point, and Postcards from the Edge.