Rose Byrne in Talks for X-Men ‘s Dr. Moira MacTaggert

With shooting on Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class gearing up to start in London at the end of the month, the cast is coming together very quickly. One key role that’s closer to being cast now is Dr. Moira MacTaggert with word coming from The Hollywood Reporter that “Damages” co-star Rose Byrne is in talks for the part.

MacTaggert is a scientist specializing in genetic mutation who was introduced in the early days of Claremont and Cockrum’s days on “Uncanny X-Men,” #96 in fact. She showed up to be Professor X’s housekeeper, but it wasn’t long before her true significance to Professor X, the X-Men and mutantkind would be unveiled. A year after the character was introduced, it was revealed in flashbacks that MacTaggert was actually Professor Xavier’s ex-girlfriend and apparently, she will be playing that role in Vaughn’s prequel which will be going back to the early days of the X-Men.

This means that so far, the confirmed cast is:

James McAvoy as Charles Xavier a.k.a Professor X
Rose Byrne as Dr. Moira MacTaggert
Mike Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr a.k.a Magneto
Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy a.k.a. Beast
Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique
Caleb Landry Jones as Sean Cassidy a.k.a. Banshee
Lucas Till as Alex Summers a.k.a Havoc
Edi Gathegi as Darwin
Alice Eve as Emma Frost a.k.a. The White Queen
Kevin Bacon in an unspecified villain role (rumored to be Sebastian Shaw)
Jason Flemyng as Azazel

That seems to only leave a few roles left, including Scott Summers/Cyclops, which would be expected with his brother Alec appearing in the movie, and Nightcrawler, which would make sense with Azazel appearing in the movie.

The earlier rumors about Rosamund Pike seemed to have been false or else she may have been up for one of the female roles above.

X-Men: First Class is scheduled to open June 3, 2011, and you’ll be able to read a lot more about this on SuperHeroHype and ComingSoon.net!