Johannesburg - Oscar-winning US actor Jennifer Hudson said she was honoured to be chosen to play Winnie Mandela in a film about the controversial ex-wife of South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela.

The biopic entitled Winnie will be shot on location in South Africa next year by local director Darrell Roodt.

"I was compelled and moved when I read the script," Hudson said in a statement issued Friday by Ma-Afrika Films, co-producers of the film with Canada's Equinoxe Films.

"Winnie Mandela is a complex and extraordinary woman and I'm honoured to be the actress asked to portray her. This is a powerful part of history that should be told," Wilson added.

Roodt is the director of several films about South Africa, including Sarafina, set in Soweto during the 1976 anti-apartheid uprising and the Oscar-nominated Yesterday, the story of a mother living with HIV/AIDS.

Hudson, an award-winning singer whose personal life was marred by tragedy last year when her mother, brother, and nephew were killed in a shooting, won an Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in the 2006 film Dreamgirls.

"Jennifer, an extraordinary talent in our time, has shown great insight in wanting to play this most challenging role," Roodt said.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, as she is now known, was dubbed the Mother of the Nation during apartheid. During Nelson Mandela' 27-year imprisonment for resisting white supremacist rule, she became a torch-bearer of the freedom struggle.

But her name was later tainted by her implication in the kidnapping of a teenage militant who was found murdered near her home in the late 1980s and by her conviction for fraud during her time as head of the ANC Women's League, which saw her quit her job as member of parliament (MP).

Despite the controversy, she is still hugely popular among grassroots ANC members, many of whom sympathized with her for being divorced by Mandela a few years after his release from prison. Mandela accused Winnie of infidelity.

The 73-year-old professional social worker returned to parliament earlier this year, as an MP in the African National Congress of new President Jacob Zuma.

The film project comes as a film by Clint Eastwood about Mandela, starring US actor Morgan Freeman as the ageing statesman, prepares to hit US screens on December 11.

The film Invictus tells the story of how then president Mandela used his country's hosting of the Rugby World Cup in 1995 to further his goal of racial reconciliation.

Matt Damon stars as Francois Pienaar, captain of the victorious Springboks side. (dpa)