Romola's raunchy new role

She is the rising star of British period dramas, for which she has been modestly paid. But Romola Garai's new role - a considerably raunchier part - is set to catapult her into the Hollywood premier league.

The sequel to one of the biggest blockbusters of the 1980s - Dirty Dancing - is expected to be one of this summer's box-office smashes and will make Garai an international star, just as the original 1987 film propelled Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze to fame. Swayze, now 50, has a cameo in the sequel.

Above is the first picture of the 21-year-old Garai as Katey Vendetto in Havana Nights: Dirty Dancing 2.

A year ago, she flew to Puerto Rico to shoot the movie, set in Cuba in 1958 before Fidel Castro came to power. For two months she was put through her paces on the dancefloor before a single shot was filmed.

She said: "I had the time of my life. The dancing is a combination of salsa and Latin ballroom."

Of the original movie, she said: "I grew up in the 1980s, so it was a film I saw regularly. Havana Nights is a repeat on the theme of the original. I play a middle-class girl from a liberal American family. I meet and fall in love with a boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

"They are brought together by dancing but the revolution forces their worlds to clash."

Garai spent the first eight years of her life in Hong Kong and Singapore before her family returned to England.

While at the City of London school, she was spotted in a play by a casting director. He hired her to be the young Judi Dench in the ITV drama The Last Of The Blonde Bombshells.

She went on to play the wilful Gwendolen Harleth in the BBC adaptation of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda.

It won her favourable reviews and she built on that success to play Kate, the plucky sister of Nicholas Nickleby in the TV film, and then her first lead in I Capture The Castle last year.