As Faith, the vampire slayer-turned-rogue-killer with a demon-wannabe sugar daddy, Eliza Dushku bitch-slapped Buffy more than once, and the role also briefly turned her onto the fun side of undead arse-kicking. Dushku’s played the daughter of both Robert De Niro and Arnold Schwarzenegger, wears leather pants so well cows are happy to go to cattle heaven for her, and is rapidly becoming Hollywood’s new ‘It’ girl.

With four movies coming out this year, as well as a role in Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Dushku’s future looks movie-star-teeth bright. It’s testament to her abilities, then, that she has managed to shake off the stigma attached to child actors.

Having won a nationwide talent search at the tender age of 10, Dushku landed a role opposite Juliette Lewis in the otherwise forgettable That Night. She followed it up playing Leonardo DiCaprio’s sister in This Boy’s Life, which also featured De Niro as her sadistic stepfather. It was as big Arnie’s tearaway teenage daughter in True Lies that she first stepped into the big league. “It was so much fun,” she later said. “But it was also terrifying for my mother — having to see her 12-year-old hanging 25 storeys above a savings bank with Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

Entering the demon-infested world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was an eye-opener for Dushku, who hadn’t seen a single episode of the show. “I showed up at the set for wardrobe fitting,” she recalls of her first day, “and they were like, ‘This is Nick, he plays Xander,’ and I’m going, ‘What’s a Xander? Is he a demon?’ They had to give me 30 tapes to fill up on.” Although she’s no longer a cast regular, Faith lives on in cameos, as well as in the spin-off series, Angel.

Free of any TV commitment, Dushku is making her mark on the big screen. Following a role in last year’s Bring It On, she will appear in Soul Survivors with American Beauty’s Wes Bentley. Then there’s Taking on the Neighbourhood, and after that, she puts on her cheerleader’s skirt again for The New Guy, before the film that should push her into the A-list, City By The Sea.

Rumours of a True Lies sequel are firming up, too, with Dushku keen to get back into action mode. “Jamie [Lee Curtis] actually called me up at home and said, ‘Eliza, this is your mother. I just want you to know I’m telling them True Lies 2 has to be about you.’ I was like, ‘Go for it!’”