For 25-year-old Mathis, the action thriller is a big departure from previous roles like last year's sweetly romantic Jack and Sarah, set in London. In director John Woo's Broken Arrow, John Travolta plays a renegade nuclear bomber pilot who tries to steal a nuclear warhead by crashing a secret Stealth bomber in the Arizona desert.

Christian Slater is his co-pilot who has to stop his and Mathis is a park ranger who stumbles on the scene.

"The success of films like Terminator and Speed now makes film studios think women can be active and heroic in action films, as opposed to being passive victims, which can be boring. It was good to be in a male-dominated action movie, I got in touch with my macho side.

"Definitely walked away from this film more confident about facing up to my fears. I proved to myself I was a lot stronger than I thought. I ultimately thrived on the experience, it was like a really good rollercoaster ride."

The daughter of actress Bibi Besch, New York-born Mathis had a traumatic personal experience three years ago when her then boyfriend, River Phoenix, died in her arms outside a Hollywood nightclub of a drugs overdose. It has taked her a couple of years to get over it.

"I was absent for a while for personal stuff, but I think appearing in Little Women was the turning point for me in Hollywood. Before that I'd been in films which had been seen but hadn't been successful. That movie really introduced me to the film community."

Mathis lives in Hollywood, sharing a house in the hills with a girlfriend. "My downtime is pretty simple. Just being home, when you're away on location so much, is great. Pretty mundane stuff makes me happy. I've lived in Los Angeles since I was five and I like the fact I can go into a grocery store and run into friends from grade school. I have this whole other side of my life here.

"I know a lot of people come to Hollywood from outside and feel out of sorts here. It's easy to think that all life here is about the entertainment industry. But I can look at all thee street corners and have memories there."

What she likes about being an actress is being able to change herself into other characters. "I like having different looks in different movies. It's great when people say surprised �you're the girl in Little Women?'. Being glamorous all the time is really boring. What's so satisfying about acting is being able to transform yourself into different women.