It was bound to happen at some point. Paul Walker has officially been cast in a role where he's going to have to do more than run around and look pretty. He's actually going to have to make us believe that he can act.

The actor has traditionally stuck to action roles, particularly ones where he can blind audiences to his weak acting style by taking his shirt off at the beach. Lately he's been making an effort to go after more serious projects, including Clint Eastwood's Flag of Our Fathers, an action war flick about the men who heroically raised the flag at Iwojima. Now he's landed himself the mother of all young dramatic roles: a true story about author Ernest Hemingway.

No, Paul won't be playing Hemingway. That honor goes to Sir Anthony Hopkins. Walker will play a young newspaper journalist who idolized Hemingway and eventually joined the older novelist in Cuba. Empire Online spoke with Walker about the project.

“This wasn’t at all calculated or ‘I want to go do this, do that’," said Walker, "I just read it and was like ‘F***! I gotta make this movie!’ Hopefully it’ll stay up, right?” I'm not quite sure what he means by that last sentence, but you can almost hear the surfer accent coming through with such choice phrasing.

Walker goes on to describe the story, talking about his character's efforts to write a novel worthy of Hemingway's approval. Though he won't send his manuscript to Hemingway himself, his co-workers at the newspaper intervene. Walker continues: ”So, his co-workers know what’s going on, they steal it, take it off his desk, drop it in the mail and send it to Hemingway. He gets a phone call at work and it’s like, ‘Hey, this is Ernest Hemingway.’ ’Yeah, bulls***, who the f*** is this?’ You know? He tells him, ‘You know what? I was so moved by your letter and what you wrote. You know, as far as I’m concerned you’re the son I never had. I want you to come out and spend some times with my wife and I in Atlanta, Cuba’." Paul's eloquence is underwhelming.

For more gems about the movie from Walker check out Empire Online's more in depth article. Frankly, I don't have the heart to force any more of it on you. The movie, entitled Papa begins shooting next summer. Adrian Noble will direct.