For two months, Jessica Biel kept her engagement ring locked down, presumably trying, unsuccessfully, to secure an exclusive with a magazine. Then a change in tactic - over the last two weeks though, she’s been waving it around hard, most obviously as she was seated courtside at the Laker game on March 11. A few days later, it was announced that she’d confirmed the second female lead, alongside Scarlett Johansson, in Alfred Hitchcock And The Making Of Psycho, starring Anthony Hopkins.

Coincidence or conspiracy?

Deadline reports that Biel beat out several other actors for the role. Because ...none of them have “engaged to Justin Timberlake” on their resume? I always wonder what it’s like in those meetings; when your agents are negotiating for you, at what point do these details come out?

“Look, if you put Jess in the movie, she’ll make between 7-12 appearances on set with Justin. He’ll come to the premiere but they won’t pose separately, but we are confident that they’ll allow one picture inside at the afterparty, in addition to access to...etc, etc, etc.”

Also...who else would they have seen for this part?

If you’re Keira Knightley or Anne Hathaway or Natalie Portman or Emma Stone, at this point, do you need to be sharing female lead positioning with Scarlett Johansson? Think about how their management might advise them on taking - or not taking - this opportunity. The goal of the agent is almost always to make sure his/her talent is/becomes #1. People always underestimate how much ego is involved in these decisions. And how some decisions are made because, well, no other decisions were available to them.

I find it very, very hard to believe that Biel and Johansson, for that matter, were beating out the likes of the Hathaways and the Portmans. Kate Bosworth, Olivia Wilde, that’s a lot more likely. And where Scarjo is concerned, considering she once belonged to the upper level conversation alongside the Knightleys of the world, this - working on a movie with the desperate fiancée of a Pipsqueak she used to f-ck - I promise you, was not where she expected and hoped her career would be 5 years ago.

Attached - Scarlett in Paris yesterday. The “most beautiful man in the world” was not with her.