Hot Spring

Emer Kenny, 19, has already made some wise choices. She has played leading lady to four of the hottest talents in film and TV: Dominic Cooper, Nicholas Hoult and the comedy duo with the Midas touch, Matt Horne and James Corden. 'Matt and James are such a laugh; they were always joking around on set. There was a girl crew and a boy crew but I wasn't really in the girl crew,' she says, sipping tea in a Kensington coffee shop.

She is currently starring as a sabre-toothed psychopath in their new film Lesbian Vampire Killers, but today, with her thick brunette mane and porcelain skin, she looks more The Remains of the Day than Dawn of the Dead.

Emer's break arrived in the middle of her GCSEs. After spending summers in the National Youth Theatre, she got an agent who put her up for a BBC drama about a boy with Down's syndrome, Coming Down the Mountain, written by Mark Haddon, the Whitbread-winning author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. 'I was like, "I can't do it. I'm in the school play," and my agent said, "Are you joking?"'

Coming Down the Mountain also starred Nicholas Hoult, whose career was in full bloom after the success of the E4 teen romp Skins. 'It was a topical, interesting piece,' she says, sounding rehearsed. 'I learned a lot from him. I'd sit there and watch how he said his lines, very slowly.

Before Christmas, Emer completed Freefall, a two-part drama for BBC about the credit crunch by Dominic Savage, winner of two BAFTAs and a Stanley Kubrick protégé; known for working with tight budgets, small crews and inexperienced casts. He cast Girls Aloud's Sarah Harding alongside Emer. 'There was no script; that's how Dominic does it. The audition process was, "Come and have a chat with me." He asked me what I thought of the script and what issues it brings up. My dad works in property so I went off on one, and he said: "You know what, I like you. Let's do this film." ' Aidan Gillen and Rosamund Pike play City bankers in one half of the story, and Dominic Cooper sells mortgages to those who can't afford them in the other. Emer plays his girlfriend. 'Dominic [Cooper] was so relaxed, and modest. At no point did he make me feel I was any less of an actor than him.' The pair spent their time between takes wandering round the Watford branch of Tesco.

'People would come up to him and get him to sign Mamma Mia! DVDs. He was always singing. He's got a great voice. He doesn't think it but he does. I mean, he sang at the Oscars.' Emer Gwynne Morganna Kenny left the 'very academic' North London Collegiate School in Edgware last summer with four As at A level. The Chronicles of Narnia star Anna Popplewell was her mentor and the pair appeared in Bugsy Malone together in the school's performing arts centre. 'She was Bugsy, taking all the limelight,' she jokes. 'I couldn't really sing that well then.'

Fashion assistant: Hannah Bort. Hair and make-up by Ruth Warrior at One Make-up using Shu Uemura and MAC.
Shot on location at Marvin's End, 2 Greenhill Road, Farnham