What are the Patten girls up to?

In Hong Kong, they were known as the Three Graces. A media frenzy greeted their exuberant, mini-skirted arrival in 1992, and their gulping tears when they left five years later came to symbolise the last days of the British Empire in the territory. Laura, Kate and little Alice, the daughters of the last Governor Chris Patten, were only in their early teens when they became unlikely celebrities.

But after the official handing over ceremony was complete, and they had been poured stiff gins by Prince Charles aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, the Patten family faced a rather ignominious return to a semi-detached Victorian house in Barnes.

But life as just another face in the crowd never seemed likely for the Patten girls and now, Alice, the youngest of the three daughters, has just landed her first big acting role in Nicholas Wright's Vincent in Brixton, which opened on Monday in the West End. Her two elder sisters, Laura and Kate, however, are less keen to recapture their moment in the spotlight. Although supportive of Alice, they seem wary that her success will reignite interest in the family.

Their mother, Lavender Patten, told the Evening Standard that her daughters had never wanted to be famous in the first place.

"I don't think they ever wanted to be in the limelight, these decisions are not necessarily there to be made - it's a question of how one stays out of the limelight, rather than wanting to be in it," Mrs Patten said from the family holiday home in France.

"They didn't have the choice. They're now grown up and all doing fine. I'm absolutely proud of them, they're all doing terrifically well. To me, they're not a story, they're just my girls."

Alice was only 12 when she arrived in Hong Kong, and while her sisters returned to Britain to school and university, she grew up amid the marble-corridored glory of Government House where men in white gloves picked her socks up off the floor and served her meals. Nevertheless, she matured into an ordinary teenager, doing some modelling and going out with an Australian surfer called Alex while in Hong Kong.

Blonde and elfin, Alice - who was nicknamed "Little Princess" by her sisters - found it perhaps hardest of all to adjust to returning to Britain.

"I cried all day," she says of her very public departure. "I was leaving my home, my friends, my school - my childhood - and I had only finished my A-levels the day before. It's unnerving being seen at your most vulnerable by so many people."

At Queens College, Cambridge - where a month ago she achieved a "slightly disappointing" 2:2 in modern languages, she went out with Jordan Frieda, the son of Lulu and hairdresser John Frieda. He is also an actor and was recently embroiled in controversy when he opted to play Prince William in an American film about the young Royals.

With her long hair and perfect features, the 22-year-old is possibly the prettiest of the Patten girls and made her TV debut this year as Imogen Dartie in The Forsyte Saga, and now spends her time flitting between rehearsals at the Royal National Theatre and her new boyfriend, Cambridge graduate Dan Rookwood, an internet sports journalist and sometime travel writer at The Guardian. She still lives at home with her parents and is particularly close to her father, who is now the external relations commissioner for the European Union and is described by Alice as "the best listener I know". Friends describe Rookwood, or "Rookers" as he is known, as "an avid Liverpool supporter, and a bit of a lad", but say that the couple - who have been together for eight months - are in love.

Laura, meanwhile, who 10 years ago catapulted the Patten girls to celebrity status by appearing at the age of 17 in a micro-skirt and a tight T-shirt, launching a bout of Laura-mania in the Hong Kong press, is now the deputy health and beauty editor of Tatler. Perhaps because she was forced to play out her rebellious teenage years in the public view - a leader in The Independent in 1992 criticised her for failing to dress appropriately and sitting "in what could only be described as a slouch - legs askew and one arm dangled over the side of her chair," during a formal ceremony - Laura has cultivated a quiet domestic life out of the limelight and, after her sudden promotion to a pop-star level of fame in Hong Kong, now shuns publicity.

"I'm very, very private," she said from her office at Condè Nast. "I'm the deputy beauty editor at Tatler, I'm very happy here, and that's it really. I've been in this job for a couple of years. Alice has obviously chosen to go into a world that's amazing and stuff, which will obviously attract attention, but she's my dearest best friend, she's absolutely amazing, and I know she'll be a huge star. We're completely supportive of her and backing her 110 per cent.

"We think the world of her, but as far as I'm concerned, there isn't really much to say. I'll probably go to previews of her play, but I won't tell her I'm there to check she's all right, I'll probably end up going lots of times."

Rather than use her name to her advantage, Laura has quietly worked her way up in the magazine world, beginning with three weeks work experience on Vogue, followed by a job at Harpers and Queen, then Vanity Fair, culminating in her present position at Tatler where she is known as hard-working and unpretentious.

In May, Laura married Elton Charles, a florist from Paddington, whom she met seven years ago. His background is decidedly unstarry: his mother is a housewife from Dominica, his father worked as a warehouseman. "We are very, very happy together," she says.

The couple held their wedding reception at the rather unlavish Wetlands Centre close to the family home in Barnes, and on a rare social outing to a fundraising event at the Royal Academy last year Laura said: 'I am a very private person, and so is Elton. We have been together for ages and he's wonderful. We normally spend our time down the pub and avoid society events like the plague."

Kate, who missed her father's signing-in as Governor when she chose instead to go trekking with friends around South America, spent the least time in Hong Kong because she was studying for a degree in Spanish and Latin American studies at Newcastle University. Like Laura, she has also spent the past five years quietly pursuing her career. After graduating, she took a job with billionaire Peter Woo's Wharf Cable TV channel, before graduating to work on Esther Rantzen's That's Life! Now 28, she is a television producer at the BBC, making programmes for BBC Choice.

"Kate makes documentaries now," says her mother, who trained as a barrister, but currently works as a mediator for couples whose marriages have broken down.

"Her last one was a series about boxing. Before that she was doing a series called Rock Shrines, about dead pop stars and their fans. It's that kind of awful TV."

A colleague who works with Kate at the BBC describes her as "serious and hard-working".

"She travelled to cities such as San Francisco for Rock Shrines," he says. "She's very popular here, partly because she pulls her weight, partly because she's fun too. She's very charming, and can talk even the most unlikely person into appearing on TV."

When Alice took her bow on the stage of Wyndham's Theatre on Monday night, both Laura and Kate were there to support her. Their little sister, who was spotted by an agent last summer when she appeared in a student production at Cambridge, will be in her element in the West End. "This is where I'm happiest: on stage," she says. It's just that after those heady years in the spotlight, her sisters would seem to crave the exact opposite.