Who’s That Girl

After smashing onto the scene as anti-heroine Lisbeth Salander in the Millennium trilogy, Swedish actress Noomi Rapace has the world at her feet. But, as she explains, her ambitions reach much further than Hollywood…

She may have been on screen for half her life, but Noomi Rapace will doubtless look back on 2010 as her year. The Swedish-born actress at the heart of the hit film adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s best-selling Millennium novels has become world cinema’s brightest new star, or to put it another way, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has become The Girl Who Took on Hollywood. Like Marion Cotillard before her, who went from an Oscar win for La Vie En Rose to starring in Public Enemies and Inception, the 30-year-old Rapace is being sized up for a Hollywood career.

When we meet, it’s just a month after she spent the summer in the US, taking meetings with the likes of Ridley Scott, McG and James McTeigue. “I met some wonderful people that I really respect and would love to work with,” she admits. It’s a heady time, not least with Rapace discussing a role alongside Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 4, as well as McTeigue’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, The Raven, and McG’s spy comedy, This Means War. What’s more, the US distributor of the Millennium films is already talking up a possible Oscar nod for Rapace for her role as heroine hacker Lisbeth Salander.

Yet the actress is understandably cautious about the groundswell of hype around her. “I’m getting more and more famous,” she sighs, “and I don’treally see any value in that, ifyou’re only famous for being who you are. I think that’s really dangerous. That can really destroy everything about your work. If I get too famous, then people will see this famous person on the screen. They won’t see my character. You have to find a balance between how much [publicity] you should do and not. I think it’s extremely important to keep some kind of secret to yourself and not let everybody move in!”

Admittedly, dressing like a movie star probably doesn’t help when it comes to preserving your anonymity. It’s 11.45am when we meet, and Rapace looks ready for the red carpet. Wearing platform heels and a charcoal-black evening dress, with a thigh-flashing split, her long brown hair is elaborately pinned up at the back of her head. She couldn’t look more different from the pierced and tattooed tomboy Lisbeth, who prefers hooded tops to haute couture. But then, after 18 months of inhabiting her skin, Rapace is probably relieved to escape.

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