What attracted you to this movie?

When I read the script I was doing a really tragic love story at the time, so I was looking for something a lot more light-hearted. I was also trying to find a movie that would let me play a villain, because I'd only played ingenues. When this one came along, it combined both aspects.

How did you find the film's humour?

Some of the jokes are a little dark. So you're trying to tweak the levels of how dark to go to make it accessible to a teen audience. Alan Ball [writer of "American Beauty" and TV series Six Feet Under] had done a draft of it. He has a tendency to really turn up the darkness. But it's loosely based on "All About Eve", so I think what's dark in the humour is appropriate.

What were you like in school?

I was bookish and dorky in high school, so the best part of this movie was getting to be on the other side. I was never the girl who walked down the centre of the hallway snapping people out of her way. So that was really fun.

How did you prepare for the film's cheerleading routines?

The girls who are behind us in the cheerleading scenes are the real Texas University drill team - the most serious in the hierarchy of the cheerleading world. They're almost militaristic in their cheerleading. We did a lot of practice with them in choreographing routines.

For the scene where I break out of the accepted routine, I asked them, "What are the things you would never, ever do in a cheerleading routine?" And it was this sort of shimmy, bump and grind thing.

What films have you made since "Slap Her, She's French"?

I've done "George and the Dragon". I play the princess who's captured by the dragon. I'm doing my British accent there, so be kind. I've also done a movie in Wales, "The I Inside", with Ryan Phillippe and Stephen Rea.

How did filming in Wales compare with Texas?

In Texas it's always hot, dry, sunny, not a cloud in the sky. In Wales, it's eight different weathers in a day. I don't know how you get dressed if you live in Wales, because it's pouring rain and then it's hot sunshine, and then it might hail. It's just so confusing.