Hollywood uncut!

I arrived in June 1996 and I felt like Alice walking through the Looking Glass. I was 24, an unsophisticated, convent-educated book editor, and I was being offered the chance to turn the book I'd written in my lunch hours into a film starring Hugh Grant.

Finding myself being feted by studio bigwigs was frankly unbelievable. But my privileged insight into the very heart of Hollywood life was even more bizarre. Nothing in my deeply conventional background prepared me for life in Tinseltown.

I'm the archetypal upper middleclass girl. Brought up in Hampshire, I attended a private convent school before going on to study English at Royal Holloway College, London.

My father, Peter, runs a construction company and my mother, Barbara, is a housewife. It couldn't have been a less showbizzy upbringing.

After graduating, I won a writers' talent contest and spent a year working for Vogue and then Tatler magazines. I was paid only £70 a week. It was barely enough to live on, but luckily I was living in Fulham with my boyfriend, an Eton-educated banker, whom I'd met at university.

After a while I left to take a job as an editorial assistant with a publishing house. Inspired by its writers, including Martin Amis, Rose Tremain and Peter Ackroyd, I decided to try my hand at novel-writing myself.

By working through my lunch hour and into the night on my boyfriend's laptop, I wrote Love: A User's Guide - about the exploits of a fashion assistant - in just four months. I was ecstatic when Hodder agreed to publish it in a £75,000 two-book deal.

That was just the beginning. One night the phone rang. It was Francis Ford Coppola's agent. He wanted to turn my book into a film. Could I see Hugh Grant as my romantic lead, or, if I preferred, Tom Cruise?

A week later a film producer rang my agent demanding I fly out to Los Angeles to set up a movie deal. I was terrified, but knew it was too good an opportunity to miss. I begged for two months off work, kissed my boyfriend goodbye and flew to Hollywood.

It was a decision that would change my life for ever - catapulting me into a world more weird and wonderful than anything I could have imagined. I found myself pitching ideas to Hollywood's most influential men and rubbing shoulders at parties with George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Ethan Hawke and Jennifer Aniston.

George Clooney is just as gorgeous in real life as he looks on screen. So is Ethan Hawke - though I am still mortified to remember our meeting. We were at a party at the fabulous Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood to launch his film Chelsea Walls.

It was May 2002, a blisteringly hot day, and sitting on the terrace sipping a margarita I got appalling sunstroke. I remember staggering to the loo - past Mickey Rourke in a woolly hat - and collapsing on the stairs.

Suddenly, Ethan was standing over me, looking concerned. 'I can see stars,' I mumbled as he rushed off to get me a glass of water. I was so humiliated, and spent the rest of the party with a pashmina clutched to my chest trying to hide the hideous red weals on my skin.

Despite that setback, eight years on I feel very much part of Hollywood life. My script for Love: A User's Guide has been bought by Paul Raphael, son of novelist Freddie.

And Buena Vista has commissioned me and my best pal, Mimi Hare, to turn an episode of the TV series Faking It - where a cellist becomes a DJ - into a film.

But even now, the crazy antics of movie people never fail to amaze me. And that's why Mimi, who started working for director Oliver Stone when she was just 19, and I decided to write our book, The Second Assistant: A Tale From The Bottom Of The Hollywood Ladder.

Every incident is based on truth. Most had to be toned down just to make them believable. Someone once said that when God tipped America up, all the loose marbles ended up in California. It's true.

For a start, everyone there is so freakily health-conscious. Recently, Lloyd Levin, the producer of Tomb Raider, who has become a good friend, threw a dinner party for me. I expected a boozy London- style party, with everyone gassing away until 3am. But Lloyd served lentil casserole and pomegranate juice. And everyone left by 11.30pm to get their beauty sleep.

Perhaps they had a pathological fear of developing bags under their eyes, or an outbreak of spots. After all, in LA personal grooming is akin to a religious cult.

On my first visit to Hollywood, before I was even allowed to shake hands with any movie folk, I was marched off to a beauty emporium to be given the full works - highlights, a manicure and pedicure - though I drew the line at having my nostrils waxed.

And it's not just the women who look immaculate. Men, from the humblest film studio runner to the biggest movie star, all dye their eyelashes. And Brazilian waxes aren't just for girls . . .

Of course, all this grooming is a kind of protracted foreplay for that other Hollywood obsession: sex. Everyone imagines Hollywood men are sex-mad, and it's true - ambitious young women are still happy to satisfy powerful men, often in the most bizarre ways.

When I was last in LA there was a story doing the rounds about an incident at the Academy Awards involving a famous film director. He was walking along the red carpet with his wife on one side and a female assistant on the other.

His wife noticed he seemed to be looking more than usually pleased with himself. Glancing at the assistant and spotting her wandering hand, she realised why.

But while sex drives a lot of male stars, most are too ambitious to waste time on relationships. They reckon serious girlfriends are too high maintenance. Besides, why would any red-blooded male want to settle down and marry Miss Average when he might get the chance to date Cameron Diaz?

I've witnessed the bizarre dating techniques of Hollywood men at close quarters. When I arrived, I was still dating my university boyfriend, but we split up in 1999.

I met my next boyfriend, a powerful studio president in his 30s, at a film premiere party in LA. He was due to fly to New York the following day, where he was making a film with Robert de Niro, so he invited me to join him on his company jet and booked me into the Four Seasons hotel, where rooms cost more than £400 a night.

It's terribly James Bond: you lie in bed, press a switch and the curtains swing open - to reveal a breathtaking view of Manhattan. He was great fun, but his idea of a romantic date was a quick cocktail before whisking me off to dinner, where I'd find myself surrounded by a gang of 50 movie moguls.

I also dated director Darren Aronofsky, who is now with British actress Rachel Weisz. We met in LA at the premiere party for his film Requiem For A Dream.

It was a huge hit and everyone was lining up to slap him on the back. I can't lie to save my life, and I think he was bowled over when I confessed I hadn't actually seen the film. I'd just come for the party.

I also dated actor Paul Rudd. We lost touch, and the next thing I knew he was playing Phoebe's husband in Friends.

I'm settled now with Barney Cordell, a 38-year- old British record producer who I've been with for 18 months. We hooked up after I decided that getting involved with a Hollywood guy is a risky business. The trouble is, these men are so powerful they're a law unto themselves. They make Stalin look like Santa Claus. One of my friends applied to be assistant to a successful producer.

She was terribly excited, until the interview. When she was told she'd have every Tuesday off for therapy - presumably for emotional trauma brought on by her boss - and asked how she'd feel if he threw a computer at her to work off his frustrations, she realised it might not be the perfect job after all.

It's not just men who feel they should be waited on like latter-day emperors. There are plenty of equally over-bearing actresses.

These women only bother to be polite to people who can further their careers. When Mimi was living with a Disney studio executive, she agreed to help him throw a party at their home.

One guest was Jennifer Lopez. Although she wasn't as well known then, she regarded herself as a huge star. She swept in, handed Mimi her coat without looking at her, and didn't say a word to her all evening - not even thank you.

Thankfully there are exceptions, so don't think every Hollywood 'player' is a fruitcake. I was dining in New York one evening when my mobile rang. It was Naomi Campbell. A mutual friend had suggested she might be right for a part in the film of my book.

Would I like to go clubbing with her? Stunned, I agreed. It was a surreal experience. A convoy of people- carriers swept up, full of glamorous models.

We roared off to Lotus, one of New York's top clubs. Minutes later the dance floor cleared and I was dancing with Naomi. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and, despite her reputation, so sweet. Sadly, the part came to nothing and we've not seen each other since.

We've spent lots of time with Uma Thurman, the star for our latest-script, Accidental Husband-about a psychologist who applies for a marriage licence only to discover that computer records show she's already married.

Uma turned out to be not only gorgeous, but totally down-toearth. We spent last summer working on our script at her house in upstate New York.

Through her, I've met some of Hollywood's biggest players. I've stopped being star-struck, but I had to pinch myself when, at Uma's 30th birthday party at a New York jazz club, I found myself between Robert de Niro and Quentin Tarantino.

Tarantino was fascinated by my Gucci sandals and insisted I take them off so he could have a closer look. I've since learned he has something of a foot fetish.

Though Uma often slops around in combat pants with no make-up, it's impossible to ignore the gulf between us. When she offered me a top designer's discount card, I had to explain, even with a 50 per cent reduction, I'd still need a second mortgage to afford his clothes.

I may mix with A-listers, but I've retained enough British common sense to know I'm not one of them - at least, not yet.

The Second Assistant: A Tale From The Bottom Of The Hollywood Ladder, by Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare (Pan, £6.99).