Keeley Hawes and Keira Knightley star in amazing true story about 1970 Miss World pageant

A brilliant cast has been announced for a new ’70s-set period drama movie, based on real events.

Misbehaviour will dramatise the story of the feminist activists who invaded the Miss World pageant in London in 1970.

The Women’s Liberation Movement invaded the stage at the Royal Albert Hall, saying that the Miss World competition was demeaning to women.

At the time, the Miss World pageant was the most-watched show in the world.

During the same show, there was later further outrage from the event’s audience after Miss Grenada became the first black woman to be crowned Miss World.

Period drama regulars Keira Knightley (Colette, Atonement) and Jessie Buckley (War & Peace, The Woman in White) will play members of the Women’s Liberation Movement, Sally Alexander and Jo Ann Robinson.

Miss Grenada, Jennifer Hosten will be played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Belle).

The Durrells star Keeley Hawes, fresh from her success in Bodyguard, will play Miss World pageant executive Julia Morley.

The cast also includes Greg Kinnear (Little Miss Sunshine) as American comedian Bob Hope, Phyllis Logan (Downton Abbey) as Evelyn Alexander, Lesley Manville (Cranford) as Dolores Hope, and Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill) as Miss World founder Eric Morley.

Sally Alexander, the former member of the Women’s Liberation Movement who will be played by Keira Knightley in the movie, recently explained why she organised the demonstration.

She told the BBC’s World Service: “I don’t know where the idea came from except Miss World – women being judged for their looks and their bodies. We had no quarrel with the contestants, our argument was with why do you have to be beautiful and looked at like this before you get noticed as a woman?”

Directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, Misbehaviour began filming in November and will be released in cinemas later this year.