MOVIE moguls shooting a Hollywood blockbuster about a former Weymouth drug addict want Echo readers to play street scene film extras.

Stephen Smith, now a successful businessman in Germany, slept rough in a skip at Littlemoor for four months during 20 years of drug addiction and homelessness.

His best-selling autobiography, Addict, has sold more than 1.2 million copies worldwide and MTV Movie award-winner Andy Serkis, now famous for his role as Gollum in Lord of the Rings, has agreed to direct a £5 million film of Smith's life.

It will be the second attempt to take Addict to the silver screen after a previous attempt foundered in 1999 when pop idol Robbie Williams turned down £1 million to star in the film.

Now Smith and a team of top writers have produced a new script which is already being acclaimed as potential Oscar-winning material

They want to rekindle the movie mania which saw more than 3,000 starstruck hopefuls flood Mr Smith's German offices with replies when he appealed for extras in 1999.

Property developer Mr Smith, 61, spent part of his life down and out on the streets of Weymouth in the late 1970s.

He said: "I am delighted that my story will finally be told. "I ended up in Weymouth after staggering on to a train in London back in 1978.

"I stayed for a couple of months, begging on the streets and sleeping rough in a skip at Littlemoor. "In those days there were very few beggars and drug addicts in Weymouth.

"If you begged then most people would give you something and if you went into a caf and asked for help then most of them would feed you."

He added that a skip at Littlemoor was his home for four months while he begged round the town centre and the railway station area.

He eventually went back to London where a massive stroke of luck saw him enter a pub so he could use their toilets for water to swallow amphetamines which were his drug of choice at the time.

Mr Smith said: "When I came out of the toilets I saw a German student, Hannelore, and she is now my wife and we have two sons, Oliver, 21, and Julian, 20.

"Hannelore went back to Germany but I got myself into hospital, got off drugs and was invited to Germany by Hannelore. The rest is history."

His 1999 appeal for extras triggered more than 3,000 letters from Weymouth and it is these people that film makers Westworld International Films now want to contact. Spokesman Giles Davis said: "Many of the original Weymouth applicants have moved away.

"We need more Echo readers to become extras for street scenes along with local musicians to capture the Weymouth feeling in its authentic rawness."

They hope to use local colour and local help to profile Smith's drink and drugs hell, from a pinnacle of high life in London to his eventual escape from a life of destitution in the gutter, a tale that Mr Smith said he hoped would help today's young people stay away from drug use.

Mr Smith and Westworld staff will be travelling down to Weymouth towards the end of June to meet some of the people who applied to be extras and to take a series of location shots of the town.

Shooting for the film is scheduled to start in August. Anyone who would like to apply for a role as an extra in the film should contact Westworld at 157 Gloucester Avenue, London NW1 8LA.