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- guardian.co.uk, Sunday October 10 1999 03.16 BST
Lena Headey nearly became a hairdresser. At 17, she was daydreaming her way through A-levels, thinking she would rather be anywhere else but school. Barely a year later, she had won a supporting role in a major British film starring Jeremy Irons. Her own reversal of fortune occurred after she performed alongside six school friends in a one-off show at the National Theatre. A few days later a casting agent contacted her drama teacher, which led to a successful audition for Waterland. She played the sexually precocious schoolgirl who fell for the boy who later became Irons.
A year later she appeared with Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins in Remains Of The Day. It was an auspicious start for Headey, despite her lack of formal training. 'I was the definitely the odd one out at castings,' she admits. 'I had a very, very strong Huddersfield accent and the producers would ask if I could speak properly.'
Her Yorkshire tones brought much less recognition than a brace of controversial roles. She played an Ecstasy-fuelled raver in BBC2's cautionary drama Loved Up, then joined the cast of Band of Gold as a troubled, lesbian prostitute. Just think, a couple of years earlier, she had played the virginal heroine in Disney's 1994 live action version of The Jungle Book. Of course, playing a hooker, happy or otherwise, has never harmed a girl's chances of big-screen success.
Although underused as Robert Carlyle's idealistic girlfriend in Face, she brought a touch of humanity to the cops and robbers thriller and, crucially, showed she could convincingly act above her age. Ironically, but predictably Hollywood has cast her as a bitchy college student in the dark comedy Gossip, co-starring Joshua Jackson ( Dawson's Creek ). At 24, she's fresh-faced enough to pass for a teenager. Furthermore, she has a two-picture deal with Warner Bros, the studio renowned for nurturing and appeasing the talent. It's also a sign she's ready to move away from the English rose period roles that found their way to her agent.
On the immediate horizon though, is her supporting role in the adaptation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Ralph Fiennes and Liv Tyler played the doomed lovers, but Headey has a pivotal role as Tyler's spirited sister.
Over the past couple of years, her partner Jason Flemyng's career has drawn more attention than her own (he was the flame-haired likely lad in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels ). They've haven't gained the It-couple status of Posh and Becks but their Hello! stock is rising.
1. She has no theatre background. 'I have no concentration. Theatre? I'd be sacked,' she says.
2. She has the name of her boyfriend, Jason Flemying, tattooed on her arm. In Thai.
3. To prepare for Band of Gold , she spent time with a Bradford dominatrix.
4. Her parents had a business importing Spanish pottery.
5. Of her topless scene in Waterland, she says: 'I watch that movie and it's: "I had bigger boobs then. What happened?"'
