And God created Virginie

As a child, the woman now hailed as the New Bardot was flogging cleaning products on a market stall in a Paris suburb. Today, Virginie Ledoyen is the most popular French actress in Britain. She's not only talented, but spectacularly beautiful in the Brigitte Bardot style, with a pout, a curvaceous figure and a mane of thick hair.

But the scruffy creature who slides almost unnoticed into the room would look more at home selling J-Cloths. Her hair hangs in limp hanks and her pale face is disfigured by an almost comically unflattering pair of severe, black-rimmed specs. And though it takes just moments with the hairbrush and the blusher to restore her appearance to its customary sultry beauty, you do wonder why she's dressed down quite so emphatically. Is it in order to walk down the street without causing builders to fall off scaffolding and cars to crash into each other? Or is she simply uncomfortable with her image as a Gallic sex bomb?

It's not as unlikely as it may sound. Before The Beach, Virginie, 26, had appeared in some 15 serious and critically acclaimed films in her native country. But after she'd made her sizzling entrance, sashaying in a clinging white dress towards a half-naked DiCaprio, her life completely changed. Now, instead of discussing her philosophy of acting, all anyone wanted to know was what it was like to snog DiCaprio under the sea like that (hard work) and whether or not they had had an affair (they hadn't, she says). You couldn't blame her for being fed up.

Thankfully, her latest film role gives her the opportunity to show off her acting skills and her appearance. 8 Women, a blackly comic murder mystery set in a country house in the Fifties, has caused a sensation in France and stars a gaggle of cinema's greatest and most glamorous actresses, including Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant and Emmanuelle Beart, as well as grande dame Danielle Darrieux.

In this exalted company, Virginie more than holds her own, and says she wasn't daunted by working with such formidable talents. What did worry her was the thought of all that oestrogen sloshing about off-set. 'I thought it might get a bit complicated with all those women together ...' she admits in her surprisingly deep voice. But the anticipated cat fights never materialised. 'In fact, it was much more fun than working on The Beach,' she says enthusiastically. 'It was like a holiday camp. We laughed all the time. What I particularly liked was that Danielle Darrieux, who is 85, still has a passion for acting. It was very encouraging to see that acting doesn't become routine, you still have the desire throughout your life.'

Virginie's own desire manifested itself at a precocious age. When she was just two, she was talent-spotted by a friend of her mother's. The photogenic toddler with the big brown eyes and glossy hair was used to promote everything from pasta to flights abroad. 'I loved dressing up, make-up, transforming myself. It was fun. I never thought of it as work.'

She was brought up in a modest home in Aubervilliers, a suburb of Paris. Her mother, Olga, ran a restaurant, her father, Bernard Fernandez, was a market trader selling cleaning products and knives. Virginie and her brother Michel, 22, a production assistant, did not have a privileged upbringing, but the family still managed to go on skiing holidays. 'I was well clothed,' she says. 'We didn't grow up on bread and butter.'

Today, Virginie doesn't have to worry about money, in addition to her work as an actress, she has a lucrative contract with L'Oreal. She owns a house in the South of France, on the Spanish border, and recently bought a grand apartment on the Left Bank of Paris.

Far from being the pushy parents one associates with child starlets, Bernard and Olga seem to have been rather bemused by their daughter's ability - she appeared in her first film at the age of nine - and didn't go with her to auditions because they felt uncomfortable boasting to the other parents.

'They had a very healthy attitude,' says Virginie. 'They wanted me to see if I liked it, but they never let me do films all the time.' Nevertheless, by the time she was 16, she had earned enough to rent her own flat.

Still, she might have remained a relative unknown outside France but for the director Danny Boyle, who saw a picture of her in a magazine just as he was wondering who to cast as The Beach's sex bomb Francoise.

The book's author, Alex Garland, has since said that she was just how he imagined his French heroine. Perhaps it's not surprising, therefore, that just weeks into filming, lurid tittle-tattle began to circulate. Virginie was having an affair with DiCaprio, she was pregnant by him... She was furious. And her boyfriend can't have liked it much, either; nor those all-too-convincing love scenes.