Jillian Haslam, the Calcutta girl who grew up on the streets and under staircases to become a globetrotting motivational speaker and author, has inspired a Hollywood film in which a big star could play her.

"The producer told me that Angelina Jolie, Kate Winslet, Reese Witherspoon or Julia Stiles might play me," said Jillian, who is in Calcutta for Christmas.

Born to British parents in Calcutta in 1970, she had endured extraordinary hardships as a child - four of her siblings died of malnutrition - before moving to Delhi when she was 17 years old. She joined Bank of America as executive secretary to the CEO and soon became the head of the organisation's charity initiatives. She later moved to the UK, where she worked for RBS for a decade before setting up her own company.

In July 2013, Metro had published her journey from the slums of Calcutta to her current home in Hertfordshire, UK. British screenplay writer Neil O' Neil developed her story into a screenplay that "won an award at a film festival".

Jillian met the producer of the proposed film, Cyrus Yavneh, through a radio host. Yavneh, who had been nominated along with others for a Primetime Emmy in 2002 for Outstanding Drama Series for 24, got Jack Sholder on board as director. Sholder had won the Daytime Emmy awards in 1980 for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Children's Programming for 3-2-1 Contact.

Sholder wrote to Jillian last month describing her story as "enormously compelling: a story almost too dramatic and improbable to believe, like something out of Dickens, yet true. It's a story that has the power to move, with an epic sweep, yet it is intensely personal."

Asked which actress she wanted to play her role, Jillian said: "People say I look a little like Julia Stiles or Reese Witherspoon, who is down to earth, but it's up to the producer and director. Angelina Jolie's name came up because she is a charitable person and a UN ambassador... she would have a feel for this kind of a story. They also said Kate Winslet because she is British and plays this kind of a role extremely well."

According to Jillian, the director plans to tell her story in flashback while she travels from the UK to Los Angeles in the US to deliver a speech.

If all goes well, the shooting will begin in the second half of 2016. Will the shooting happen in Calcutta? "Of course," asserted Jillian, whose "heart is in Calcutta". And for at least two to three weeks "because there is so much to cover".

"I definitely want to shoot in Kidderpore and definitely under the stairs of the house where we stayed on Prinsep Street," she said. Jillian wants a part of the film to depict her time at St. Thomas' Girls' School in Kidderpore, where she studied from 1976 to 1987.

She wants images of "the dormitories" in the film because she spent "a lot of time there and a special mention of the matrons", who never made her feel that she "was less".

During her five-day Christmas holiday, Jillian has been asked by the producer to look out for two children who could play her and her sister Vanessa in the film.