Pretty little gunny

Lara Croft model Alison Carroll

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.