ROMALA GARAI

AGE AND OCCUPATION: 20, actor. PROVENANCE: Wiltshire County, England CHICK LIT: Garai—named for the heroine of Romo/a, George Eliot's 1862 novel—was 16 when a casting agent spotted her and gave her a role in a BBC television film. "It was a few days' work, and it was just sort of fun for me. I've been doing it ever since. BABY'S IN A CORNER: Next up, she'll get down with Diego Luna in Havana Nights Dirty Dancing 2. "We had nine and a half weeks of dancing. It was one of the most exhilarating things I've ever done."

In the film—more of a geographic retelling than a sequel—Garai plays a young American who, in 1958, moves to Cuba with her family and falls for a local boy against her parents' wishes. COINCIDENCES ABOUND: Garai is currently filming an adaptation of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, opposite Reese Witherspoon. George Eliot, who first published Romola in a magazine edited by Thackeray, couldn't have asked for more —KRISTA SMITH

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