STATHAM'S LOVE INTEREST WAS PLUCKED FROM OBSCURITY

The film's writer Luc Besson spotted the freckle-faced beauty as she hurried to work at a hair salon - and offered to train her for the third Transporter film.

He recalls, "She just passed by me and I noticed her freckles and blue eyes. I was with my assistant and I said, 'Are you seeing this?'

"Of course, if I said to her, 'Hey, I'm Luc Besson,' she'd probably run, so my assistant asked me if she should ask her if she's a model or something, so she'd feel more comfortable.

"So I proposed to her if she wanted to try to act and my assistant and I went back to Paris and we gave her some 25 lessons. We prepped her for about six months and then we brought her to Paris to verify if she was ready or not.

"We had a couple of other girls auditioning to frighten her, but, honestly, she was very good on the screentest, so we hired her."