"Myra Shumway is an impish trouble-maker and that's something I'm not. She is constantly creating chaos and making things happen around her...I had to change completely to portray her."

"Myra goes through a huge journey in the course of the film, questing magic and meaning in her life," says Bridget Fonda. "Her story is a metaphor for the last tricks and tribulations of maidenhood. Myra is a child-woman who refuses to be taken, to be conquered or to give in, because she understands that when you need someone, you're not autonomous any more."

"Myra is the kind of person who feels that love is not something to be trusted," she continues, "so she tries to be completely self-sufficient. And when she finally does take a trusting step, with Ross, she's met with betrayal, which immediately prompts her to be betray her true feelings. The pained child in her, deserted, abandoned, will do anything to avoid that pain again. It's the wonderful kind of hubris of someone who thinks she can outsmart her destiny, a very youthful luxury."

Fonda was also excited by the prospect of having to become proficient at performing some of the complex magic tricks that her role entailed, although, she says, "the actual magic tricks are not half as interesting as the people who are fascinated by the idea of real magic. I'm interested in the kind of magicians, and there are very few women magicians, whose primary love is the illusion, rather than control over the illusion."

Fonda went to great pains to make sure she was able to do the magic tricks, even when the camera is watching the reaction to the illusion rather than the trick itself. She says "I'm very impressed, with the ingenuity of real magicians, " says Fonda, who talked at length to Frances Willard, one half of the famous, husband and wife team, Falconstein and Willard duo, in order to get a better understanding of her approach to magic and her control of each illusion.

Bridget soon realised that is was not so much the dexterity that was critical in magic, but the illusion that a great magician is able to create. "The tricks are not really what the great magicians are about; some people do tricks very well, but the people one is in awe of are those whose primary love is the illusion. The quest for real magic is timeless, and it brings out ancient desires and fears in us."

Bridget Fonda is one of Hollywood's busiest young actresses. From one of Hollywood's most famous acting families, Fonda has worked hard to carve out a singular niche and she is now one of the most sought-after actresses of her generation.

Born in Los Angeles in 1964, the granddaughter of Henry, niece of Jane and daughter of Peter Fonda and Susan Brewer, Bridget's childhood was marked with the cinema. At the age of eighteen, she enrolled at New York University to study drama for four years and also took classes at the Lee Strasberg Institute.

Soon after graduation, she worked with the Manhattan Class Company in "Confession" by Jay Buckner, "Pastels" by Lance Lane and "Just Horrible" by Nicholas Kazan.

In 1987, Fonda was offered her first part in a film, "Aria" by Franc Roddam and this was soon followed by rolec in "Shag", Frankenstein Unbound by Roger Corman, in which she played Mary Shelley, "Leather Jackets" by Lee Drysdale and dramatist David Hare's first film "Strapless".

In 1989, Bridget Fonda was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in "Scandal" by Michael Caton-Jones and was subsequently offered roles in "The Godfather III" by Francis Ford Coppola, "Doc Hollywood" by Michael Caton Jones, with Michael J. Fox and "Singles" by Cameron Crowe.

Since the film that catapulted her to international stardom "Single White Female", Fonda has hardly stopped working, going from "Little Buddha" by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1992, "The Point of No Return" and "Bodies Rest and Motion" in 1993, to "Camilla", a road movie starring Jessica Tandy, "It Could Happen to You", also starring Nicholas Cage and directed by Andrew Bergman and Alan Parker's recent "Road to Welville", with Matthew Broderick and Anthony Hopkins.

Bridget Fonda has also acted for television, most notably in an episode of "The Edge" for HBO, directed by Nicholas Kazan, as well as in TV movies such as "Professional Man" and "Jacob Have I loved" for PBS.