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At one point the 30-year-old linked arms with Mortensen, who looked dapper in a cream suit and his own sun hat to take on the con artist character.

The pair stood between two pillars as the camera team set up the next set of shots.

In a related development, a decision by the Central Archaeological Council has given the go-ahead for two movie projects to use the Acropolis and other archaeological landmarks as filming locations. The first film, called "Two Faces of January" and based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, is to star Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst under the direction of Iranian-British screenwriter Hossein Amini.

Scenes are to be filmed on the Acropolis in Athens and at Knossos on Crete though the crew has not been granted permission to film within the columns of the cordoned-off Parthenon. The crew reportedly had asked to film scenes depicting laborers on scaffolding around the Acropolis in the 1960s but were informed that there had been no works under way on the monument at that time and that such scenes would be anachronistic.

By Melanie Goodfellow

Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst co-star in adaptation of Patricia Highsmith thriller, produced by Working Title and financed by StudioCanal.

Principal photography has begun on Hossein Amini's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's Greece and Turkey-set set thriller The Two Faces of January.

The picture, starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac, will shoot on location in Crete, Athens, Istanbul and Ealing Studios in London.

Working Title is producing the picture and StudioCanal is financing and will distribute in the UK, Germany, France, Australia and New Zealand and sell in the rest of the world.

Iranian-British Drive and Snow White and the Huntsman screenwriter Amini, who was nominated for an Oscar for his adaptation of Henry James' The Wings of the Dove, makes his directorial debut on the picture, which he also adapted for the screen.

Set in 1962, Mortensen and Dunst play glamorous American couple Chester Macfarland and his attractive, younger wife Collette. They befriend young Greek-speaking American Rydal, played by Isaac, who is working as a tour guide in Athens, scamming tourists on the side. In the thrall of Collette's beauty and the couple's wealth, Rydal accepts an invitation to dinner. He soon discovers that the couple's affable, well-to-do exterior hides dark secrets.

The Two Faces of January continues Working Title and StudioCanal's ongoing film-by-film relationship and follows on from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Dan Mazer's romantic comedy I Give It A Year, which is currently in post-production.