News has emerged that Taylor Swift was shot down for a role playing singer Joni Mitchell on the big screen – by Mitchell herself.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 71 year old songwriting legend dismissed the suggestion that Swift should portray her in an as-yet-unmade film of a book ‘Girls Like Us’ when casting talks were held in 2012."I squelched that. I said to the producer, 'All you've got is a girl with high cheekbones.'"

Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift was apparently rejected as a possibility to play Joni Mitchell in a cancelled movie project

But Swift probably shouldn’t take it personally, as Mitchell ended up squelching the entire project, apparently because she was dissatisfied with the veracity of the source material. Sheila Waller’s book tracking the influence of female singers such as Mitchell, Carole King, Carly Simon, was apparently inaccurate.

"It's just a lot of gossip. You don't have the great scenes. There's a lot of nonsense about me in books...assumptions, assumptions, assumptions,” she recalled telling the producer. Alison Pill was apparently in the running to play Carole King in the film before Mitchell withdrew her support for the project.

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As well as her enormous success as a musician, Swift also has some experience at acting. She made her debut in star-studded, critically eviscerated Valentine’s Day back in 2010, and had a minor role in The Giver in 2014. Although she was never actually offered the Girls Like Us role, she told Rolling Stone back in September that she’s always been a huge fan of Mitchell, occasionally getting maudlin and weeping to some of her records.

In other Swift news, her three week stay at the top of the US Billboard album charts has been ended by British heartthrobs One Direction, who released their latest album Four last week. Her fifth album 1989 has already racked up sales of more than 2.21 million in less than a month, however, making it the year’s highest seller so far.

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