After quitting The Big Breakfast, Brook hit Hollywood, took a lead role in a pilot, starred in the Superman series Smallville, and is doing pretty nicely as one half of a celebrity couple with Jason Statham, who starred in Snatch.

Brook, now 23, is from traditional British working-class stock. She grew up in a council house in Rochester, Kent, but she could have been born a tabloid icon. All the hallmarks are there.Flawless womanly beauty, E-cup breasts, dramatic ascent, undignified decline, then success - its own revenge. As she says, 'I suppose it's time for me to be dragged down again now,' but it's a smiley sort of cynicism, because hard as it is to accept that someone is this glamorous and pretty smart, she is also unbelievably nice.

The second time I met her, she was in my living room, naked but for a golden lace curtain, being photographed. Then there was a shot of her wearing just diamonds, and another of her in the most tasteful Agent Provocateur corset. Then there was her naked but for some feathers. Her 2004 calendar is big business. She gets to control the shots and bankroll herself to credible performances on stage and in independent films like School of Seduction, directed by Sue Heel, which she's just finished shooting in Newcastle and Rome.

Many actresses know how to be charming to an interviewer for a few hours. The difference with Brook is when she did a shoot in my house, which I sometimes rent out for shoots, she had no idea who I was or that she had anything to gain by being charming. Many models come and go. Most treat it as a studio. Kelly was sensitive, aware it was a home, cherishing of the furniture, a trouper.

As we meet for the third time, in the photo studio, the taxi driver who took her there is in seventh heaven. 'She's so lovely.'

Sickening, isn't it? But Kelly is too smart not to be nice. Her almond eyes give her a look that's delicate, but she says she's fearless. There's something of the young Sophia Loren about her, even in her young Hollywood outfit of Juicy Couture velour hooded top and jeans.

She and Statham have a house in the Hollywood Hills. She just had a cameo role in his film The Italian Job. Again, she knew how to do a premiere dress: a backless beaded mini made the headlines, with stories that she is to star in Mission: Impossible 3 and the new series of Sex and the City. That's all lies, she says, and it made people on her Newcastle film set wary of her. 'They wanted to give me my own car instead of travelling with the other actors to the set, and I said, 'No f---ing way. You're going to alienate me just because you read that I was going to star with Tom Cruise? I'm not saying I don't want you to bring my f---ing cup of tea in the morning, but there is a balance.''

Her co-stars in School of Seduction are Dervla Kerwin, Margi Clarke, Emily Woof and Tim Healy. She says working on it has been 'a dream come true. This was the first script I could really relate to. It's about a girl who lives in Italy who is married to a guy who's a bit of an arsehole, so she feels crap about herself and starts attending seduction classes. She finds she's good at it, then realises she doesn't need the guy any more, so she sets up a school for seduction and teaches Geordie lasses and one transvestite the art of seduction'.So how do you teach someone how to seduce, and why did you relate to it? 'You have to realise it's not about, 'I need to be more sexy for him and he'll love me more.' It's about being confident in yourself. That makes you more attractive.'

Is it you teaching what you need to learn: confidence? Kelly looks through me, politely. 'There's only so much of someone telling you you can't do something before you start to believe it. I needed to go away to where nobody knew me, so I could go for auditions and wouldn't be given a job just because I could create a certain amount of publicity by getting it. I trained for this my whole life, since I was 10. I was a dancer. I did pop videos and that opened the door to The Big Breakfast, but that's all I'm associated with.'In other words, she was associated with failure and confirmed, rather tragically, that a beautiful 19-year-old woman can't be glamorous and clever. 'Well, they're just not, are they? They're just not allowed,' she laughs. 'Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, they've both had to deal with being judged for what they look like and not taken seriously. I can relate to how they felt.'

Marilyn, Madonna, Kelly? 'Yeah, I like the way I put myself in the same category as them,' she laughs, then reminds me: 'The one thing I should have learnt is not to make jokes in interviews. It never comes off right.' She's developed an ability to turn bad things into good, the glass always being brimming. 'The Big Breakfast meant I am not afraid. I am not afraid of making a fool of myself. I don't care if I turn up on a film set and they say, 'Today we want you to throw an egg in your face,' because it's already been thrown there.'

She was dumped without a supporter. Not even her co-sofa-sitter, Johnny Vaughan, stood up for her. 'He joined there long before me, so his loyalties were with those who surrounded him. Why wouldn't they be? I never expect anyone to stick up for me.' Not even Jason? She considers. She plays a cool but loving game with him, saying things like: 'Marriage isn't sexy. I don't want to be a wife. I want to be a challenge.'

She likes to think their relationship is very close, but they are very independent. They met 51/2 years ago, before Lock, Stock and before The Big Breakfast, on a fashion shoot in Greece. 'I fancied him and I got someone to hook us up when we were back in London. Within three months we were going out. I got that job, he got his film released. It happened quickly.'