Romola Garai, who stars as the title character in Angel, grew up in Hong Kong and Singapore but makes her home in England now. (Stan Behal, Sun Media)

Like most impressive actors, Romola Garai is unrecognizable from role to role.

Beautiful, British and unencumbered by tabloid baggage, Garai was the plain, downcast, teenage Briony in Atonement, but also the earnest beauty Barbara Wilberforce in Amazing Grace and the brave girlfriend in Rory O'Shea Was Here.

She is also the hilariously self-centred heroine of Angel, the Francois Ozon film that opens here today.

Angel is a headstrong young woman who writes dreadful, overwrought novels -- and they make her rich. The film is a send-up of the sweeping epic, the costume drama, the rags-to-riches story, and it's Ozon's first English language movie.

Garai, who is in almost every scene, was here for the movie's premiere at the film festival.

"What I loved about the humour in the film is that Francois is able to poke fun at something most artists are unable to laugh at," she says, "which is their own inability to see reality for what it is. Most see it as a terrible outrage and a trap, and themselves as romantic figures, and Francois just thinks it's hilarious. I love him for that.

"And for the way he's so disrespectfull of the craft, in some ways."

Garai lives in London now, but grew up in Wiltshire and spent the first few years of her life in Singapore and Hong Kong. Her father is a banker and her mother is a writer.

Garai has two sisters and a brother, and while everyone in the family is interested in the arts, she is the only actor.

Acting in school plays was her start in the business, and while she was at City of London School For Girls, a casting director with a niece at the same school saw Garai in a theatre production.

"He said he thought I could do a bit part in something, a walk on, and I did. And then I got an agent," says Garai, "and she said, 'Let's give it a go,' and so I did bits and pieces for television, and then I got the lead in I Capture the Castle. Based on that wonderful novel.

"That was a proper job, and I had to work for it. So I took that and I've been doing it ever since. It's been a bit strange."

In only six years, Garai has starred in a dozen movies, including Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, Vanity Fair, Scoop, As You Like It, Amazing Grace and Atonement.

It seems as if she's accomplished a lot in a short period of time, but Garai, who is 25, says, "To me, it seems an eternity, in some ways. Time passes slowly when you're young. And it's a strange way to live, very disassociated from the way most young people do live, in terms of their life progression, so I already feel I've been around the block a few times."

And, she adds, it doesn't always feel as if she's moving forward.

"Some jobs don't work out. You do other jobs and you think they're going to be the biggest thing ever, and they're not. Sometimes you don't work at all for months. It's all peaks and troughs."

Right now, her career seems to be mostly peaks.

Garai, who is also busy finishing her university degree in English literature, recently completed a world tour doing King Lear and The Seagull with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She won rave reviews. (And Trevor Nunn directed her as Cordelia for the TV movie version of King Lear.) Garai will play Jackie Kennedy in the upcoming film Flying Into Love, and she appears with Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and Antonio Banderas in The Other Man.

Looks as if the paparazzi had best start practising how to properly pronounce her unusual name.

"Maybe I should have some sort of phonetic name tag," she jokes. "Luckily, it's not a problem I've ever had," she adds. "Or ever hope to have."

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