Paris takes London by storm

Paris Hilton is reclining against a damask sofa in Home House, ordering coffee with four sugars, and trying to debunk the tabloid-inflamed myths that surround her multimillion-dollar self.

She doesn't drink ('Oh, I just hate the taste of alcohol'), and she doesn't really do 'dos' any more. 'I mean,' she says, widening her limpid dolly eyes earnestly, 'I don't even go to parties any more. Not really.' So she didn't recently have three 21st-birthday parties all to herself? 'Well, yes, but that's just sociable.'

The glossy, cash-honed blonde - heir to her grandfather Conrad Hilton's hotelier fortunes - seems to have dedicated her life to the traditional pursuits of the feckless, spoiled and unapologetically loaded: modelling, partying, controversy courting. Paris is the girl who flashes her nipples at the paparazzi. The girl who announced she didn't wear underwear as it's 'tacky'. Who posed bare-breasted for a David LaChapelle shoot in Vanity Fair.

Yet now, Hilton wants to prove there's more to her than inherited wealth and endless legs. She's here to launch her acting career, starring in Brit director Andrew Green's horror flick, Nine Lives. She plays 'a high-school model, a jet-setting type who goes shopping all the time'. Typecasting? 'No. She's not like me. More how people would perceive me.' Indeed.

There's something so guileless about Hilton in the flesh, so disingenuous about her attempts at alternative careers (she's already launched a denim range and a perfume), that it's charming. Plus, she's truly pretty. Today, she's working the toned and tanned LA look. She has translucent skin, clear ocean-blue eyes, and sugar-almond-pink lips. 'I go to bed at 10pm. I wake up at 4.30am. I've only been to a couple of parties since I've been filming,' she says, pointedly, in a Sweet Valley High accent.

Paris was born in New York in 1981 - her mother, Kathy, was a QVC presenter and her father, Rick, in real estate. Until she was 18, she lived in a suite at the New York Waldorf hotel with her family - mum, dad, sister Nicky and two younger brothers. A charmed life, it seems. But is she happy she's a Hilton? 'It has its drawbacks. People think: "She's gonna be mean and rude," and I'm not. People wanna make things up. I've read things about me being in places I've never been. But I only care what my friends think. They know what they read is just retarded. It hurts sometimes - I hate it.'

Paris has been dating Jason Shaw, the face of Tommy Hilfiger, for 15 months. She's smitten: 'He's gorgeous. I wanna marry him.' She recently saw a girl flirting with him and was so incensed she threw ice-cubes at her. 'She kept saying sorry, I kept throwing ice in her face. It was funny.'

Should Paris's acting career fail her, she also has singing ambitions. 'My sound is in between TLC and Britney,' she says. Clearly, her desire to be recognised for something more than her inheritance is her main ambition. 'Just as long as I'm known for something,' she says. 'It's dumb when people are known for nothing. It's retarded when people think: "Ahh, she's just rich."'