Viola Davis is always playing characters defined by their work — social worker, CIA agent, bad mom, domestic maid, space engineer, nurse, cop, policewoman. Her next two roles will be (a) a librarian helping a couple of kids deal with hauntings in Beautiful Creatures and (b) a genius recruited by the government to help defeat an alien insect race in Ender’s Game. In short, she’s in a rut.

The solution is that she needs to play a woman defined by emotion, preferably by sex and passion. Davis is 46 and if she’s going to play a role of this type, she needs to do it soon.

I mentioned this to Sasha Stone a couple of hours ago as we recorded another Oscar Poker, and it hit me that a great opportunity would be for Davis to play the maid — a sexual maid — in an American remake of Too Beautiful For You. The 1989 French original, directed by Bertrand Blier, is about a BMW car dealer (Gerard Depardieu) cheating on his beautiful wife (Carole Bouquet) with his ordinary looking temporary secretary (Josiane Balasko).

The American remake could star Brad Pitt as the car dealer, Angelina Jolie as the wife and Davis as the maid. The idea wouldn’t be that Davis is “ordinary looking” as much as an attractive but unconventional choice as an extra-marital romantic interest, certainly by classic standards.