God bless games designers. Without them we wouldn't have Space Invaders, Tetris, Pac-Man or Grand Theft Auto III. We also wouldn't have Lara Croft. The Tomb Raider games were often excurciating to play, but Lara was always nice to look at. Inevitably a model would make Lara flesh at some stage, and that model was Rhona Mitra. She thought the role was hers, and even had a breast enlargement to fit the very particular dimensions of the virtual babe. But it was not to be. The games company didn't want any one model holding them to ransom, so they used many different women at different times. Glamour model Nell McAndrew was one of the more interesting, and with a 35" D bustline, she actually had a bigger chest than Lara! But her past glamour modelling assignments were not in keeping with Core Design's family game, and she was also replaced.

The big jackpot was, of course, the possibility of a Tomb Raider film. As the project solidified, talk turned to who would get to play the pixelated heroine on-screen. Every young female in Hollywood was mentioned at some point, from Sandra Bullock (might have been okay) to Demi Moore (would have been awful). It got to the point where the manager of every female actress or model between the ages of 18 and 35 was floating their client's name as a possible Lara to get some column inches. Even Lisa Snowdon was mentioned. And she's not even an actress!

Just then, Angelina Jolie won an oscar, and her career went A-list seemingly overnight. An actress with an incredible body, but a mixed resume (Cyborg 2 anyone? A movie in which even with Jean-Claude van Damme wouldn't reprise his role!) she was perfect - all pouty lips and bad grrrl attitude. And she was still in the process of becoming a major celebrity, so she wasn't impossible to get. Thus Angie took home the coveted role of Lara Croft, appearing in 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. The picture itself was decent, but unexceptional (its IMDB rating is a disappointing 5.2). But not so bad that the studio didn't push ahead with a sequel. Clearly Angie's experiences with Cyborg 2 hadn't put her off sequels. In due course, the hype machine geared up to speed, and posters of Angie clad in a wetsuit in Venus Ascending pose were soon everywhere. Feedback on 2003's clumisly monikered Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life was initially better, claiming that this picture did a better job with the character of Lara. But people don't go to action movies for character development, and the action wasn't any better than its predecessor, perhaps explaining the similarly lackluster rating of 5.2 on IMDB.

Despite the happy-family, mutual back-slapping tone of the behind the scenes features from the sequel, Jolie stated publicly at the time that she had no desire to play Lara a third time. It was most likely a moot point: with neither movie distinguishing itself at the box office, and action pictures led by female characters like Catwoman tanking, the studios' taste for the nascent chick-flick-meets-explosions genre had soured. As of March 2007, there is no sign of a third installment. Mind you, with a fourth Indiana Jones flick now slated for a May 2008 release, nineteen years after the last installment, we aren't writing her off yet.

Meanwhile, Lara's cyber incarnation limped along in one average game after another, each one revealing the game design to be further and further out of step with the public's tastes. But the public's taste for hot women in tight clothing never wanes, and so Lara lives on in model form, this time with Karima Adebibe filling out our feisty heroine's curves.

Speaking of filling out Lara's curves, let's see how the various model (and actress) "stack up" (if you'll excuse the phrase)...

Name	Rhona Mitra	Nell McAndrew	Jill de Jong	Angelina Jolie	Karima Adebibe
Date of Birth	Aug 09 1976	Nov 11 1973	Feb 02 1982	Jun 04 1975	Feb 14 1985
Nationality	English	English	Dutch	American	English
Heritage	Irish-English/Indian	English	Dutch	American	Irish-Morrocan
Bust	34	35	34	36	??
Cup	D	D	?	C	?
Waist	24	26	26	27	??
Hips	35	35	38	36	??
Height	5'6" / 1.69m	5'9" / 1.75m	6'0" / 1.83m	5'8" / 1.73m	5'8" / 1.73m

And let's have a look at some images too, while we're here ;-)

Angelina Jolie Angelina in promo shots for the Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life sequel in 2003.

Karima Adebibe Born of an Irish mother and Morrocan father, Karima is the latest model to fill out Lara's figure in the flesh.

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