Based on true events, Melissa McCarthy plays a struggling author who forges letters by famous writers. Acclaimed Oscar-nominated comedy drama co-starring Richard E Grant.   Melissa McCarthy stars as Lee Israel, the bestselling celebrity biographer (and cat lover) who made her living in the 1970s and ’80s profiling the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, Estee Lauder and journalist Dorothy Kilgallen. When Lee found herself unable to get published because she had fallen out of step with the marketplace, she turned her art form to deception, abetted by her loyal friend Jack (Richard E. Grant). WHAT THE PRESS SAID “Melissa McCarthy is magnificent as an odious literary forger abetted by Richard E Grant as her lounge-lizard drinking buddy. FIVE STARS” – Guardian “Grant is a paragon of debauched decadence, tragic and magnificent at once. His regal bearing crackles with a sly wickedness.” – Daily Mail “Melissa McCarthy and Richard E Grant\'s tragicomic fraudsters are genuinely fantastic. FIVE STARS” – Daily Telegraph Release Date  3rd June 2019