First sight: Noomi Rapace

Who is she? A 30-year-old Swedish ­actress who has assumed the mantle of fiction's brainiest evil-fighting heroine. Hermione Granger? I thought Emma Watson had that ­covered. No, Lisbeth Salander, from the late Stieg Larsson's mega-selling Millennium trilogy: kick-ass feminist avenger and total dark heart. Rapace plays Lisbeth in the film of the first book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I haven't read it. What's Lisbeth's MO? Punk computer hacker with a ­photographic memory. She's pierced, tattooed, anorexically thin and half of an odd-couple detective duo, with a leftie journalist. The pair ­investigate the ­disappearance 30 years earlier of a wealthy ­industrialist's niece, ­dredging up Nazi ­sympathisers, corruption and ­stomach-churning sexual ­violence. She looks pretty tough. Larsson described Lisbeth as looking like "she had emerged from a week-long orgy with a gang of hard ­rockers". Rapace learned kickboxing, how to ride a motorbike, got the piercings and dyed her hair black to pull it off. ­Director Niels Arden Oplev ­described her transformation is ­"chillingly perfect". What next? Two further Millennium instalments. You could see her, like Franka Potente, adding a dash of European cool to ­Hollywood. Kristen Stewart, Ellen Page and Natalie Portman have all been ­suggested for the inevitable US remake.