Whole Lara love

Coming face to face with Lara Croft is many a teenage boy’s dream, but when you actually find yourself eyeball to shoulder with the six-foot tall Jill de Jong, the new face of Lara Croft, it’s hard not to feel slightly intimidated – and she’s not even packing her guns.

In Ireland to launch the HB Gamezone at Xtravision, Jill de Jong is the official face of the cyber-heroine for the new game Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness. But how comfortable is she playing the role of a worldwide sex symbol?

“It is just like acting,” she admits. “Sometimes I wake up at six in the morning, going ‘Oh no, I have to be Lara today’, because I’m not always in the mood to get all that attention. But once I am dressed and have the make-up on, it’s okay. It feels quite natural.”

Does she ever think about the millions of teenage boys all over the world who have posters of Lara on their walls and whose heads are filled with thoughts that wouldn’t be altogether pure?

“Not really,” she laughs. “It is a job and I like to entertain. I like to meet fans, but after a couple of hours of these crazy people shouting and having a good time, I can take off my costume and I’m Jill again.”

The Tomb Raider games have always been suitable for everyone from pre-teens to adults, but lately, a lot of video games have been upping the ante in terms of sex and violence. What does Jill make of the increased adult nature of games?

“I think violence in games is usually more of a fantasy,” she says. “Some people have suppressed aggression and it is good for them to shoot everybody in the game. As long as they see it as a game and a way to relieve their stress, to feel good about themselves as the actor in the game, that is great. What I don’t like are some of the other games where you can rape people in the street; that is just horrible.”

Jill is quick to point out that playing the role of Lara Croft is a world away from the hack and slash violence of many modern titles: “Lara is defending herself,” she points out. “She is not a serial killer. She is a feminine Superman to me, so she’s a hero.”

So what are the similarities and differences between Jill and Lara?
“The things we have in common are that we’re both adventurers. We like action. We’re athletic and inquisitive. The differences…” she muses, before smiling mischievously, “the tits, maybe.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Jill is not a video games fanatic.

“I love games and competition in general, but I am more active. I wouldn’t really sit in front of a screen for hours,” she admits. “I travel a lot, and I’m always in a plane or a train, so it is so nice when I’m at home to go out to the park, get a ball somewhere and play.”

An Ajax fan since she was a kid, Jill has been so busy recently that she hasn’t seen her favourite team play for some time. Anyway, she prefers playing football to watching it, although the opportunities for a game are few and far between, “Because there aren’t many girls who want to play,” she observes, “I usually end up playing with men, but it’s hard to get a team together. It’s a shame.”

Outside of sport, Jill is a music fan and names Norah Jones, Robbie Williams (“’cos he’s crazy”), Justin Timberlake (“who has good energy”) and Coldplay (“who have some very good songs”). She has even tried her hand at singing and is currently learning to play guitar, citing her style as pop/rock. She also paints and reads lots of books: “As a model, the work is a bit of a routine. You do make good money, but during the day you tend to get bored so you want to learn something. I read a lot of psychology, philosophy, spiritual books that make me feel alive and rich inside.”

Being an international model, jet-setting around the globe to the most exotic of locations, from catwalks in Paris to beaches in Barbados, would seem to be one hell of a life. However, Jill is quick to point out that it’s not all fun and frolics.

“I’ve never seen it as a glamorous job,” she states. “When you start off as a model, you stay in a model apartment where you sleep in bunk beds and have only a few square metres for yourself. They say models don’t eat, well they fucking eat a lot and some girls won’t clean up after themselves. It’s almost like a prison in the beginning and you’re thinking ‘Is this glamorous?’ OK, so there are some models who do well but there are so many who are still in those model apartments, still struggling, especially the men. This is the only job where men earn less money than women.”