Lara Croft model
Alison Carroll coming to screen in "Gridiron UK"
Alison Laura Carroll
(born 27 March 1985) is an English gymnast, model and actress. She was the Lara
Croft model from 2008 to 2010.
Carroll was born on
27 March 1985, in Croydon, Surrey, in the United Kingdom. She trained at the
Urdang Academy in Musical Theatre and graduated in 2007 with a distinction.
Carroll has represented the United Kingdom as a professional display gymnast.
She is also a teenagers' gymnastics coach, choreographing the winning junior
team at the British National Championships. Since 2007, Carroll has been a
registered actress. In August 2008, when working as a receptionist at a golf
club, Carroll was announced as the new Lara Croft model for the latest video
game featuring the heroine, Tomb Raider: Underworld. Carroll replaced previous
Lara model Karima Adebibe, who retired from the role earlier in the year.
Carroll held the position until 2010, and is the final official Lara Croft
model, as the use of models has been discontinued for future Tomb Raider games.
Filmography Movies
GridIron UK (pre-production)
Amsterdam Heavy (2011) as Moniqu
The Kid (2009) as Clare
Life is an Art (2009) as Claire Jones
Doghouse (2009) as The Teen
The New Arrival
The central
character in Tomb Raider is the British archaeologist Lara Croft, a female
adventurer in search of ancient relics. Lara was created by one-time Core
designer Toby Gard, with her character and backstory fleshed out by writer
Vicky Arnold. She appears almost invariably with brown shorts, boots and
small backpack, a dark green or blue sleeveless top, holsters on both hips for
dual-wielded pistols. Over the course of the series, her 3D model has undergone
gradual graphical improvements, as well as enlarged (and later reduced) breast
size.
Over the course of
time, the Tomb Raider series' canon has undergone various changes or retcons.
These changes correspond to the series entering a new medium, such as comic
books or film, or being taken over by another game developer. For example, in
the first Tomb Raider game manual, Lara Croft is said to have survived a plane
crash in the Himalayas at the age of twenty one, and was later disowned by her
parents, who are still living. However, in the comics, Lara lost both her
parents and her fiancé in the crash. The films make no mention of a plane
crash, Lara's mother died when she was too young to remember, and her father
died under different circumstances. When development of Tomb Raider was
transferred from Core Design to Crystal Dynamics, Lara's biography was that she
and her mother survived a plane crash, and later her mother disappears in the
site where they crashed (see Tomb Raider: Legend). She was then left to her
father, who was not involved in the crash, and he was later killed by Jacqueline
Natla, a recurring character in the series, leaving Lara an orphan. However, in
the Lara Croft movie, Lara's father is killed by the Illuminati (see Tomb
Raider).
In addition to the
voice actresses who have been responsible for Lara Croft's spoken dialogue
during the games, a number of women have taken on the role of Lara for
applications outside of the games themselves. Six different women have served
as the official Lara Croft model for publicity purposes, including model Nell
McAndrew, actress Rhona Mitra, and, most recently, gymnast Alison Carroll, who
held the job until 2010. American film star Angelina Jolie portrayed Lara Croft
in two feature-length Tomb Raider films, which together grossed nearly US$500
million worldwide, making her role as Lara the most well known and widely seen.
Sixteen years after
the release of the original game, Lara is still one of the most famous and
recognizable video game characters in the history of the medium. The debate
over whether she is an icon of female empowerment or a vessel for male
titillation has existed for as long as she has, but the huge effect she has had
on both gaming and popular culture in general cannot be denied.
