Who is Leelee Sobieski? Michael Idato discovers that the down-to-earth 17 year old is also Hollywood's hottest rising star.

Some people refer to Leelee Sobieski as the girl who looks like Helen Hunt. Some people recall she played the daughter who wanted to stay with her boyfriend in Deep Impact.

But this week she rises to the occasion as Joan of Arc in a television mini-series which not only plays out a mesmerising chapter of history, but also puts Leelee Sobieski on the map.

At the tender age of 17, Sobieski's career has been rich and varied. Her credits include the Merchant-Ivory production A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries and more recently the acclaimed Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut.

More interestingly, Hollywood has responded to her rise. She is now considered one of the hottest properties in a town known for a fickle approach to both beauty and talent - and Leelee Sobieski is not short of either.

Each role on her résumé reads like a rebellion against the one before it. But according to Sobieski, there is method to that madness.

"I think it's less about typecasting and more about what is interesting to me," she says, with a confident, assured maturity which leaps beyond her tender 17 years.

Joan of Arc is the role which will put her in front of a worldwide audience of millions.

The story of an illiterate French peasant girl in the 1400s whose boundless faith, courage and determination enabled her to unite France (and contributed to her being burned at the stake at age 19).

"I liked the idea that she was a character and everyone else was against her, kind of like the ugly duckling," Sobieski says.

Indeed, Sobieski took something of a gamble on the role. She signed on to the project scriptless, having read only an outline of the story.

"Everyone was against her and she was fighting for everyone, not herself, so that there wouldn't be any more fighting," explains Sobieski.

"She was up against such odds at a time when women were really considered nothing." The role opened up possibilities, though Sobieski admits she was caught between her own interpretation and how she feared others would expect her to play it.

"I think it's helpful that the character is real, but at the same time you feel so many people know the character. You are constantly asking yourself, will I fulfil their expectation, will my interpretation to them be accurate or will I be thought of as a joke.

"Joan of Arc is this character in history who is a saint, and you don't want to do an interpretation of her which is wrong.

"Sometimes that is intimidating."

Intimidating it might have been, but it was far from glamorous. Instead of a Hollywood studio, the film was shot on location in the Czech Republic.

The harsh location meant Sobieski spent many of her days trudging through mud, weighed down by 30kg of armour.

"Sometimes it was difficult and it was anything but glamorous," she says.

"It was cold and snowing for many of the scenes and you're even colder in the armour because the metal conducts heat.

"When you're on the horse, the reins in one hand, the banner in the other, the sword on the left hip and you have 200 men behind you...it was funny, it was laughable," she says.

Identity lies at the core of an actor's work, and Sobieski is conscious of that. Playing Joan of Arc was draining, to say the least. Since working on it, she has shot a number of films including Never Been Kissed.

Joan of Arc, however, was no kissing matter. It was so draining that Sobieski spent little time deconstructing the impact of the character on her.

"I couldn't, because she had taken so much emotion that I didn't have anything left for myself when I was working.

"She filled all of my time."

Playing such demanding roles and approaching her craft from such an involved level, takes away somewhat from the teenage aspect of Leelee Sobieski. The expectation from the media, as well as the fans, is of a young woman with a maturity beyond her years, not a giggling teenager who is allowed to make mistakes.

The truth, says Sobieski, is somewhere in the middle.

"Leelee is a teenager who spends a lot of her time with adults and therefore starts to think about a lot of interesting things," she explains of herself. "But then I spend a lot of time with teenagers and think about a lot of silly things, and I've kind of gone through this self-discovery process, while the other side feels like this wise old woman."

The wise old woman in her may well be stepping up to the dais this week, to accept an Emmy Award for her performance in Joan of Arc.