Thanks to Lara`s fan from Finland>

this is interview from 2001:

Sam Taylor-Wood:

“Lara Belmont rose to the challenge of starring in `The War Zone’, her first film, with strength and vulnerability. What I saw on the screen was someone who had not been trained in any way. Who was totally open and natural. I’m looking forward to seeing a lot more of her on the big screen.”

LARA BELMONT

Discovered at 13 by Isabella Blow, Lara Belmont spent her early teens modelling. At 18 she was spotted again, this time by a casting agent. Belmont went on to win the role of Jessie in Tim Roth’s The War Zone, for which she won Best Newcomer at the 1999 British Independent Film Awards.

What are the five things most often said about you?

Lara Belmont: Spun-out, positive, moody, sympathetic, generous.

The reason you get out of bed every morning is…

I don’t get out of bed, that’s the reason why I want a job.

If you could take only one item into the next century, what would it be?

My sanity - it’s not something I want to lose.

What’s the first thing you’ll do when you wake up in the 21st century?

Feel dazed and confused then take a paracetamol.

The person you’d most like to be stuck in a lift with…

Scarlet, my best mate, because we do everything together.

By this time next year…

I’ll have joined CND, got my driving licence, achieved inner happiness and finished a pint.

This short film is alot simmilar to the “Open skies”. Lara plays a mother that remember her last minutes with her little daughter before she dissapeared.

Ok, this is Lara wallpapers, hope you like them!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/hampshire/realmedia/bigscreen/bigscreen_openskies?size=16×9&bgc=BLUE&nbram=1&bbram=1

(You will need Real Player installed)

Portrait of a dysfunctional marriage with a crime story background

If it were not for the brilliant portrayal of a family in which the married couple are no longer in love with each other, this would be only slightly better than a normal crime story. The relationship has reached a stage in which even banal conversations between the parents of two boys and a young adult daughter are likely to end in ugly arguments. Tom Forrester, played by Michael Maloney, is too busy running his business to have enough time for his family. His wife, Jen, played by Jemma Redgrave, is a busy mother who is dissatisfied with her role, and regrets not having continued with her work. This relationship is the main story, and the two characters keep up a tension throughout the film between their dissatisfaction with their partner and their remaining hopes for happy family life.

Jen organises a house swap with the family of an Australian professor for the Christmas holidays. While they are staying in Australia, the professor, Charles Anderson, played by Jonathan Cake, steals various belongings from the house in England.

There are various twists in the tale, which keep up the interest in the criminal part of the story, and also increase the likelihood of the family pulling together through adversity.

The supporting cast were very good. Rose Trenchard, played by Phyllida Law, was a very credible typical older lady neighbour, and Lissa, the nineteen-year-old daughter of the family, played by Lara Belmont, was very convincing as a young adult slightly disturbed by the constant arguing of her parents.

Following the various twist and turns in the story, the film reaches a dramatic final scene in which the married couple play out a thoroughly logical and satisfying ending, and even this may not be what one is expecting.

THREE weeks ago, Lara Belmont was a student drugged and left for dead by psycho Jonathan Cake in Marc Blake’s two-part ITV thriller The Swap. Then, for the next couple of nights, she was in 19th-century St Petersburg, on BBC2, as spiritual prostitute Sonia in Tony Marchant’s adaptation of Crime and Punishment.

Lara Belmont in The Swap: ‘I love the idea of doing something that you feel passionate about, but I hate the idea that people know who you are’ 

Add to this her role as a clubber pursued by a murderous spook in Marcus Adams’s horror film Long Time Dead, which opened in January, and one can’t help concluding that, so far, it has been quite a year.

On screen, Belmont is pale, petite and distractingly pretty, a remarkably relaxed actress who both looks her 20-odd years (her exact age is a state secret) and can also radiate a melancholic knowingness far beyond them. Whether the vehicle is good (The Swap), bad (Long Time Dead) or mixed (Crime and Punishment), she quietly, almost involuntarily, walks away with scene after scene.

In the flesh, she is no less alluring, but she also has a skittish energy that has not yet made it on to the screen. She enters the central-London bar where we meet with a big smile, a firm handshake, and a flurry of apologies for being so late. Her tardiness is the result of protracted preparations for her latest project, Ashes and Sand, a film adaptation, by director Bob Blagden, of Judy Upton’s play of the same name, in which she stars opposite Lock, Stock . . . alumnus Nick Moran.

The play was first seen at the Royal Court in 1994, with Samantha Morton in the lead. “I’ve taken her role,” says Belmont, her accent betraying a childhood divided between south London and Gloucestershire, “though I probably won’t do it as well!” The role in question is Hayley, the leader of a gang of girls who try to get some money together to escape their native Brighton, and the story is about the cracks that develop in their friendships and plans.

“Hayley,” says Belmont, “is a very intense, highly intelligent, in-yer-face sort of girl, and the film is really high-energy. I really wanted to do something like this, and I’m looking forward to it. It’s very easy,” she continues, apparently reflecting on past performances, “to be in front of the camera and be quite low, and be quite ‘in yourself’ - it’s much easier than to break out and really act. It’s very easy to be quite sullen.”

“Easy”, it must be said, is not a word that one would associate with the role with which Belmont made her name, and which is likely to remain her most notorious. Despite having modelled intermittently since the age of 13, she had never considered acting - until, so legend has it, she received a tap on the shoulder while out shopping one day. Is the story true?

“Hundred per cent!” she replies in sing-song tones. “I was cruising along Portobello Road with my sister and my friends, and before I knew it there was a Polaroid in my face, and then one thing led to another - it was a whirlwind, I guess.”

The mystery photographer was a talent scout for British actor/director Tim Roth, who was casting for his 1999 screen adaptation of Alexander Stuart’s pitch-black tale of incest, The War Zone and within weeks Belmont, unknown and untrained, had left her sixth-form college to play Jessie, the frequently naked daughter of Ray Winstone’s monstrously abusive Dad.

Critical opinion was polarised. On the one hand, Belmont was almost universally praised for her performance. (Artist Sam Taylor-Wood spoke for the multitude in describing her as “totally open and natural”, and was so impressed by her that she made her the tearful star of her silent film Breach, at her White Cube²’s exhibition last year.)

On the other hand, The War Zone reignited the age-old debate about the ethics of nubile young actresses disrobing for middle-aged men in the name of cinematic art.

What Belmont’s perspective on this chapter in her life will be in 20 years, one can only speculate. Certainly, she appears to have taken it in her stride. “It was all right,” she says breezily, pinching a Marlboro Light. “I’m pleased I got the chance to play Jessie. It was an opportunity I just wasn’t going to throw away - even,” she adds, “if it did mean getting my kit off.”

Belmont may be on the foothills of fame, but she does not entirely relish the prospect of reaching the top, and is even considering returning to college at some point. “I hate the idea of being spotted on the street now,” she says. “I was walking down the road to see my sister one morning, and this guy was suddenly just walking along with me sounding off about stuff I’d done. I don’t like that. I love catching the bus, I love catching the Tube, I like being able to pick who I talk to. I love the idea of doing something that you feel passionate about, but I hate the idea that people know who you are.”

Belmont is hardly the first person to say this. But, in an age groaning with putative Pop Idols for whom celebrity is all, the means a distant afterthought, this is one young performer who seems to have her priorities straight.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/03/02/btvclass0.xml

Coming…

All most there…

And here it is:)

Lara is being nasty to her school mate

Bullying girls from school

Seductive eyes…

Stalking in the shop…

Brief synopsis:

A mother takes her boy to the beach and shows him beautiful things. At sunset, she falls asleep on the sand. When she opens her eyes her child is gone. Now everything which was once beautiful becomes threatening as she searches for her missing child.

Format: Super 16mm

Year of Production: 2007

Running Time: 3 mins 30 secs

Director: Rob Brown

Producer: Hampus Myer

Executive/Co-Producers: Adam Merrifield

Editor: Adam Neale

Screenwriter: Rob Brown and Hampus Myer

Director of Photography: Justin Brown

Production Designer: Rebecca Sarah Gardner

Sound: Kayleigh Blayden / Howard Beran

Principal Cast: Lara Belmont, Harvey Walsh
http://www.bbc.co.uk/hampshire/content/articles/2007/10/01/bigscreen_openskies_feature.shtml