Audrey Tautou will join Hanks in ''Da Vinci''

Columbia Pictures has found a comely codebreaker to join Tom Hanks as costar of The Da Vinci Code. According to Variety, it’s winsome Amélie gamine Audrey Tautou, currently on screen in the French World War I romance A Very Long Engagement. Tautou, who made her English-language debut in 2002’s Dirty Pretty Things, beat out several other top French actresses (rumors had Julie Delpy and Sophie Marceau in the running) for the role of Sophie Neveu, the cryptographer whose grandfather’s murder in the Louvre sets in motion the plot that unites her character and Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Hanks) in an Indiana Jones-type quest. French action veteran Jean Reno (The Professional) is also on board as Detective Bezu Fache. Ron Howard is directing the adaptation of Dan Brown’s bestselling novel, shooting the film in mid-2005 for a May 2006 release.