Liza Minnelli says upcoming biopic needs ‘an actress who loves to move’

Liza Minnelli can’t be tamed.

The 78-year old legend of stage and screen announced a new tell-all memoir this past August, to be released in 2026. The memoir has already been optioned for television, and Minnelli has opinions on who should play her. “We don’t know! We’re very grateful that Academy Award, Emmy, Tony, and Grammy winners are so excited to talk with us,” she told PEOPLE. “First, we need a great script and an actress who loves to move.”

Why someone who can move? “Honey, first, I’m a dancer… like the great line in [A Chorus Line]: God, I’m a dancer… a dancer dances… even with replaced hips and scoliosis!”

Minnelli said at the time of her memoir announcement that she wanted to set the record straight after “a sabotaged appearance at the Oscars,” “a film with twisted half-truths,” and “a recent miniseries that just didn’t get it right… All made by people who didn’t know my family, and don’t really know me.”

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Today, she’s revealed even more about the topic she hopes to explore most fully in the memoir: her experience with substance use disorder.

Minnelli confessed that she “wasn’t going to tell this story, until I realized, maybe I’m still alive because I have a responsibility to help people like me, whose brains are wired differently… I work on recovery every day,” she adds. “Let’s stop the shame.” Minnelli entered rehab for substance abuse in 2015, and has been candid about her struggle against addiction in the time since.

As for the eventual adaptation, Minnelli thinks the subject will break worthy new ground. “The story of an SUD [substance use disorder] victor not victim, who happens to be closing in on age 80, is a first for the screen,” she said.

Minnelli is the daughter of Hollywood superstar Judy Garland and the Academy Award-winning director Vincente Minnelli. One of the most successful nepo babies to ever do it, Minnelli broke ground with both of her parents to carve a singular career path of her own, winning an EGOT due to her performances in films like Cabaret, stage musicals like The Act, and TV specials like Liza with a Z.

She’s busier than ever now nearing 80, gearing up for a collaboration with Tiffany and Co. as their “newest creative contributor,” recording new music, producing a musical at The Shubert New World Stages in New York, and promoting her new career-spanning documentary, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, which is set to open theatrically in the new year.