Zoe Bell is clinging to the bonnet of a white 1970 Dodge Challenger travelling at 150kmh. She wears a look of pure terror but her lean body is carefully controlled and lithe as a cat while the car she\'s riding is rammed by deranged psychopath Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) and swerves wildly across the road.

Bell admits that the long, adrenaline-charged stunt sequence in Quentin Tarantino\'s latest film Death Proof - in which she makes her acting debut as herself - could have gone badly wrong.

Safety precautions were taken but the car was travelling at dangerously high speeds. \"Basically if we\'d had a major glitch during that sequence I could\'ve very easily not walked away from it so well. But that\'s not something I\'m thinking about when I\'m doing it. I\'m not in a state of fear then, I\'m concentrating on making it look scary and making sure I\'m opening my face to the camera. I experience the fear leading up to it. We got faster and faster and bigger and hairier as we went along so it enabled me to adjust my fear levels as we went.\"

In many ways Death Proof is Bell\'s movie. Tarantino has created a role that showcases her abilities as a stuntwoman and introduces her as an actress. He says, \"I just thought, \'Wow, this should be really exciting, casting a stunt person who knows what they\'re doing, and they can actually do this wild stuff I\'m coming up with on camera. No cheating. Zoe was very specific about that.\"

Death Proof - a homage to American Grindhouse (exploitation) movies from the early 1970s - is a fast-paced pastiche of Tarantino\'s familiar elements: catchy music from the 60s and 70s, hot young actresses, clever dialogue, and a veteran male movie star playing against type (this time Kurt Russell takes over where John Travolta left off in Pulp Fiction) spliced with scenes of stomach-churning violence. Tarantino has even written himself into the film, playing a sleazy bar owner named Warren.

For New Zealand audiences, the highlight is when Kiwi stuntwoman Zoe Bell strides into the film midway through and quickly becomes the low-key heroine. Wearing a greenstone pendant, and talking in a broad \"sweet as\" Kiwi accent, Bell is described by her on-screen posse of girlfriends as \"Zoe the cat\" for her ability to always land on her feet.

She\'s full of praise for the actresses she worked with, Rosario Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Tracie Thoms.

\"Those girls were so fantastic to me as a newcomer, they were so supportive and professional but so relaxed and they expected nothing less of me.\"

Bell is speaking to The Dominion Post by phone from her home in Venice, California. She\'s fast becoming a star in her own right instead of stunt doubling for Hollywood actresses such as Uma Thurman and Sharon Stone.

She has a small acting role on hit television series Lost and will play the lead character in several upcoming action films but she shows no signs of being spoiled by success.

She\'s friendly in an easy, relaxed way and when she describes her starstruck \"Oh my God it\'s Kurt Russell\" moment at Cannes earlier this year she still sounds like a girl from Waiheke Island who was good at gymnastics and martial arts.

\"The dude is legendary, he\'s a f...ing fantastic dude. He\'s easy, he has amazing words of advice, he spoke my language. When I was working with him, he was just Kurt. But when I was in Cannes walking down the red carpet with Quentin and I turned around and there was Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn and she just looked like an ultimate movie star, and I suddenly went, \'Holy shit, how did I get here?\' \"

It has been a steep, swift and dangerous ride into Hollywood for the 28 year old. She credits her good friend Quentin for giving her a big leg-up in the film industry.

\"The man\'s changed my life pretty drastically twice now. If it wasn\'t for Kill Bill I probably would have been back in New Zealand three months after I left, and if it wasn\'t for Death Proof I don\'t think I would be pursuing an acting career right now. He\'s also one of my longest away-from-home friends.

He\'s just become a bit like family - crazy, famous, really rich, really powerful family.\"

She goes over to Tarantino\'s house to watch movies in his private cinema and hangs out with his friends, including Edgar Wright (from Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead) and Cabin Fever director Eli Roth.

Bell may be tough but she learned she wasn\'t invincible when she was badly injured on the set of Kill Bill Vol 2. She severly damaged the ligaments in her wrist and spent a year off work recovering and considering her future, realising that another accident could end her career in an instant. She keeps fit and has a muscular physique but says she\'s seldom in 100 per cent top shape \"because I\'m a little bit lazy by nature, I think\".

\"Injuries are part and parcel of the job. Sometimes shit just happens. Hopefully if you\'re fit enough, you can heal well from those things.\" She has realised lately that it\'s her ability to \"fake it\" during stunts - to look hurt or scared even when she isn\'t - that has made her good at what she does.

\"If it doesn\'t actually look like I\'m going to die on the car then it\'s boring to watch. It\'s the acting that I never knew I was doing.\"

As her career as a leading lady takes off, she is planning to take acting lessons, and she will have coaching in an American accent because she knows there are only a few roles for a Kiwi in Hollywood. But she\'s not relying on classes or coaching for success.

\"If it works out for me, it works out for me because there\'s something I have that I\'ve already got, do you know what I mean?\"

While she\'s philosophical about her chances of making it big, as always, Bell is willing and gutsy enough to jump in and give it her best shot. With bells on.