LEONARDO DICAPRIO MAY PLAY GAY CODE BREAKER

Leonardo DiCaprio has been tipped to play Alan Turing in a film about the World War II genius who was prosecuted for being gay.

Warner Bros studios has bought a script titled The Imitation Game by screenwriter Graham Moore about the code-breaker, and the Oscar-nominated DiCaprio is being touted as the front-runner for the role.

According to Deadline, the Titanic star ”has the inside track” to play Turing and has been “chasing the project”.

Turing (1912 – 1954) is considered by many to be the father of modern computing.

He also played a key role in breaking the Nazi Enigma code during the war.

Turing was outed as gay and was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexuality and was given the choice of imprisonment or chemical castration.

He chose the latter and underwent forced oestrogen hormone injection treatment for a year. Turing committed suicide from cyanide poisoning at the age of 41.

In September 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a formal posthumous apology to Turing for his persecution.

DiCaprio will next be seen in the Clint Eastwood biopic of the late FBI director J Edgar Hoover, who was rumoured to have had a gay relationship with Clyde Tolson, the then-associate director of the FBI.