The South African born former model has worked pretty steadily since moving to LA in the early 90s. Yet to have a smash hit, she plays a character in "The Italian Job" remake that was not in the original, and is currently filming "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers", playing Britt Ekland.
You get a nice juicy role in "The Italian Job". Did you have fun?
You can live vicariously through the characters you play. I mean, I would never be a safe cracker and there I was, having a professional safecracker teaching me how to break into a safe! It was really interesting.
What was it about this film that attracted you to it?
Mark Wahlberg and I did a movie together called "The Yards", which I was so happy to be a part of, and also extremely proud of. I had a fantastic time working with him and we remained friends. When this script came along, it was sent to me and I knew he was already cast. Then he called me and said: "You have to come and do this. It's not a serious movie. We can have some laughs, have a good time." And I just like being around him, plus he's a phenomenal actor.
So how does your character Stella fit into this film - because her character didn't exist in the first film...
Well, this is an homage to the Michael Caine version, which didn't even have a female character. Stella is really the driving force. My father, played by Donald Sutherland, is part of Mark's team of thieves. He gets killed in a heist that goes bad. So I go into it with a lot of emotional baggage which is nice because in these kinds of movies, you often go into it without anything solid to play from. But she's really got some good stuff going for her.
How much did you enjoy driving the Mini Cooper?
It was insane but it was so much fun, especially the fact that I was the only girl with all these boys. They said: "We should give her some extra weeks because she's a girl", and as soon as I heard that, I said: "Let's take a week off!"
It was like this constant competition between me and Mark [Wahlberg] and Jason Statham, and I have to say, I walked away with my head held high. I did everything except one jump. I like to do my own stunts because you actually get to do something real. It was fun. We got to drive down stairs and stuff and nothing bad happened, which is really good because you worry about things like that when you do a movie like this. I only crashed three times!
