Toni Collette to star as scientist in independent comedy

Toni Collette has boarded an independent comedy in which she will play a scientist who tries to prove that nurture is more powerful than nature when it comes to raising children.

In "Birthmarked," Collette will star alongside Matthew Goode as well as Andreas Apergis, Michael Smiley, Fionnula Flanagan and Suzanne Clément, reports Variety.

Collette and Goode will play a pair of scientists in the 1970s who quit their university jobs to conduct a psychological experiment that gives more weight to the power of nurture over nature.

In the study, the pair raise three children who are predisposed genetically to become feeble, angry and textbook smart to become the opposite: smart, pacifist, and an artist.

Shooting has begun on the film in Montreal.