NEWPORT -- Vanessa Redgrave, Claire Danes, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson are in the City by the Sea to film the movie Evening, which has begun shooting at The Ledge estate.

Steven Feinberg, director of the Rhode Island Film & Television Office, said yesterday that the entire film would be shot in Newport and Tiverton at a location he refused to divulge. He expects that Evening will be filming in the area for eight weeks.

Based on the novel by Susan Minot, the Hart Sharp Productions film explores the romantic past and emotional present of Ann Grant, played by Redgrave, and her daughters, played by Collette and Richardson, who is Redgrave's daughter in real life. As Ann is dying, she remembers the defining moments of her life a half-century earlier in flashback. Danes plays Ann in her younger years.

Similarly, Streep and her real-life daughter, Mamie Gummer, play one of Ann's college friends at older and younger ages.

Feinberg did not have a figure for the film's budget, although distributor Focus Features is known for its economically made independent films, such as Brokeback Mountain. Feinberg said the actresses loved the script, which may be why the producers got to line up such an impressive cast.

The cast has picked up an imposing collection of awards in their careers. Redgrave won the supporting-actress Academy Award for 1977's Julia. Streep won the supporting-actress Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer in 1979, the best-actress Academy Award for 1982's Sophie's Choice, and has picked up six other best-actress nominations. She has been anointed by critics around the country as an award front-runner for her performance as the overbearing yet vulnerable antihero of the hit The Devil Wears Prada.

Close, who created the flamboyant Cruella DeVil in 101 Dalmatians and its sequel, has received five Academy Award nominations, including for Fatal Attraction. Collette was nominated for the 1999 film The Sixth Sense.

The script for Evening was written by Michael Cunningham, who wrote the novel The Hours, which was adapted by David Hare in a film that starred Nicole Kidman and Streep. It is being directed by Lajos Koltai, whose last film was Fateless.

Evening joins a list of movies that were filmed in Newport, beginning with some background work for the 1956 hit High Society starring Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra.

In 1973, Robert Redford and Mia Farrow took over the Rosecliff mansion for several weeks when they shot scenes for the film The Great Gatsby, although most of the movie was shot in England. Four years later, Laurence Olivier and Katharine Ross shot scenes for The Betsy at several Newport mansions in the screen version of a Harold Robbins book that was loosely based on the life of Henry Ford.

Filmmakers were back in the summer of 1987 shooting scenes for Mr. North, bringing heavyweight cast members Robert Mitchum, Lauren Bacall, Anthony Edwards and Anjelica Huston to the City by the Sea. The film marked the directorial debut of Danny Huston, whose father, renowned director John Huston, was the film's executive producer and co-writer of the script based on Thornton Wilder's novel Theophilus North. John Huston died in Middletown, where he was staying, during the production.

In 1997, Steven Spielberg brought Matthew McConaughey and Anthony Hopkins to Newport's Old Colony House to film scenes for Amistad, about a mutiny aboard a slave ship. They even built a replica of a 19th-century jail in the center of town for the film.

The cast of Evening will work in more refined settings.

mjanuson@projo.com / (401) 277-7276