The film Domino - scheduled for release this August but now likely to be put back while Tony Scott, its director, adds a new, tragic ending to it - is likely to further confound the world’s understanding of its subject, Domino Harvey.

Before she was found dead in the bath at her West Hollywood home, Harvey had made clear her hatred of the film, starring Keira Knightley. Proudly lesbian, Harvey disliked what she saw as soft-porn titillation in the film and she regretted selling the rights to her life story for just £26,000. The film cost £30 million.

Harvey could have enjoyed a life of idle celebrity. The daughter of the actor Laurence Harvey, star of The Manchurian Candidate and Room at the Top, and of the Vogue model Paulene Stone, Harvey was born into a world of luxury and emotional turmoil.

Her mother had been made pregnant by Harvey, who had bought her a house in Hampstead in London. Her father then divorced his American multi-millionairess wife Joan Cohn and married Stone, but died when Domino was just three. To complicate matters, he was widely believed to be having an affair with one of his male producers during Domino’s infant years.

Domino’s mother later married the Hard Rock Café entrepreneur Peter Morton and went to live with him in the US, leaving her daughter at boarding school in England. Harvey, an aggressive child, was frequently involved in fights with boys and was expelled from four public schools.

"When I was two, Dad bought me dungarees in every size," she recalled. "I was a tomboy who wanted to play only with Action Men. If I was given dolls I cut their hair and pulled their heads off." She settled down a little at the liberal Dartington Hall School in Devon, where she spent her time building canoes and studying martial arts. Upon leaving, though, she had little idea what to do next. Along with her father’s temper, she had inherited her mother’s languorous good looks. She tried modelling, with some success at the Ford model agency, but hated it. "They were trying to manipulate me," she said. "I realised I would never be able to take orders from idiots. I remember thinking one night that my life was meaningless."

She tried running a nightclub, while designing and selling T-shirts at a shop in the now-defunct Kensington Market. In 1989, "looking for the next thrill" she left for America and became a ranch hand in the San Diego mountains. Her companions there schooled her in the use of many kinds of weapon. She grew to love the confidence and sense of self-sufficiency she got from shooting and living in the wild, independent of her mother’s money.

Harvey worked next for the San Diego fire department, where her habit of carrying a 10in knife and her love of cream liqueur earned her the nickname Dagger Baileys. She was most comfortable around "macho" men and loved to be told that she was as tough and as fearless as them.

In 1994 it was revealed that Harvey had taken a job with the Celes King Bail Bond Agency in the district of South Central Los Angeles. Her job was to bring in fugitives facing trial by any means short of murder, in return for which she was paid 10 per cent of their bail bond. Her quarry usually consisted of lowly gang operatives and drug dealers, and her average earnings were just $300 a week. Harvey was, however, good at her job. Her approach was to capitalise on her Englishness, appearing vulnerable and flirtatious - a lost tourist who would inspire a protective instinct. By this means she would lure her prey away from a bar or strip club and push a gun into his ribs only once they were out of public view. Her partner, Ed Martinez, a Vietnam veteran, once said: "There’s no woman I know who’s got more balls. I think of her as a terrorist type. One minute she can be sweet and shy, and the next she’ll put the fear of God into you with one look."

She still enjoyed support, though, and when her mother moved to Hollywood Hills she went to live in an annexe to her palatial home. Harvey’s bedroom there, with a leopard-skin carpet and racks of guns, knives, samurai swords and riot-gas cannisters, put her closest to the Lara Croft/Kill Bill fantasy figure that Knightley will portray in Domino. It seems that things became worse for Harvey when Stone returned to England in 1999 with her new husband, Mark Burns.

Harvey claimed to be addicted to her job, but another addiction - to heroin - was robbing her of the strength she needed to do it. When she sold her story to the film-makers she weighed little over seven stone, and in 1997 she disappeared, spending two years and more than £60,000 at the Habilitat centre on Oahu, Hawaii.

Harvey was arrested in Hollywood last month in connection with a drug trafficking sting in Gulfport, Mississippi. Millions of dollars were reportedly involved and she faced life imprisonment if found guilty. An inquest into her death is expected.

Domino Harvey, model and bounty hunter, was born on August 7, 1969. She died on June 27, 2005, aged 35.

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