William Keck

PASADENA, California:

Who’s hot: Eva (pronounced EH-vah) Green Why now: She’s 12th-century Princess Sibylla, the forbidden object of young blacksmith Orlando Bloom’s affections in director Ridley Scott’s Crusades epic, ‘Kingdom of Heaven’.

The buzz: If her screen presence can reignite Bloom’s box-office mojo, Hollywood’s other leading men will be crusading to work with this newcomer.

Green plays Orlando Bloom’s love in the film, though many of her scenes were cut. “That’s life,” she says.

The disappointing news was delivered by her ‘Kingdom of Heaven director’, Ridley Scott. “Of course it was a shock, but that’s life,” Green sighs . “The role still exists, although it is a different movie.” Green at least fared better than the young actor who was cast as her eight-year-old son.

Scott assured Green that his expanded director’s-cut DVD would restore much of her hard work. In that version, Green will be heard speaking more Arabic. “My role is much more complex,” she says. “It (will be) a whole other movie.”

That version is also expected to restore her extended sex scene with Orlando Bloom. No stranger to eroticism, Green first dropped jaws on screen in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 sibling ménage à trois political drama, ‘The Dreamers’. “I know in America a lot of people were shocked,” says Green, who describes her rub-a-dub-dub threesome-in-a-tub scenes as no big deal.

Green is a woman with a complex dark side. Bloom describes her as “a French femme fatale who screams off the screen.” On her hand are two macabre rings: a silver skull and a fossilised blue iridescent beetle. “I’m not morbid or gothic,” Green says, opening her purse to reveal yet another fossil — a stone she uses to calm her nerves. “I just find these things so fascinating.” What deeply perplexes Green are Americans who continue harbouring ill will toward the French for not joining the US in the Iraqi war. “This phobia (against) French people is very narrow-minded,” she says, comparing her people to Bloom’s character, a reluctant warrior who fights only to protect his people from foreign invasion.

Green knows that for her to land work, she must warm to America. To improve her English, she recently purchased an apartment in London, which she shares with Griffin, an eight-month-old border terrier.

She’s hoping her boyfriend of four years will join them soon. “All the business is happening in LA,” she concedes. “So I’m moving toward America very slowly.” — USA Today