Noomi Rapace

Noomi Rapace, Maybe it was inevitable that whoever landed the lead in the original “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” would become Sweden’s next big export. Yet with or without a blockbuster role, Noomi Rapace always felt she would break out beyond the borders of her homeland.

Two and a half years after the debut of “Dragon Tattoo,” the first of her three eye-popping turns as late author Stieg Larsson’s untamed heroine, Rapace has stormed into Hollywood in Robert Downey Jr.’s latest Sherlock Holmes adventure and Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus,” a cousin to his sci-fi hit “Alien.”

Rapace felt right at home among Downey’s ensemble for “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” while she grew up on “Alien,” “Thelma & Louise” and other films from director Scott.

“Ridley Scott is one of my heroes since as long as I can remember. I kind of actually think that he saved me sometimes, because I always felt like an outsider in Sweden. I didn’t feel Swedish. I always felt like something is different with me,” Rapace said in an interview to promote “Sherlock Holmes,” which opens Friday. “The Swedish people are quite repressed, and they hold back a lot of things. It’s like people are really afraid of conflicts and emotions, and nobody really says anything straight to you. …

“So in a weird way, I always felt that I was going to leave kind of what I came from. But I could never imagine I was going to end up with these people and doing movies with the best people in the world.”

Rapace, 31, appeared in her first movie at age 7 while living in Iceland before her family moved back to Sweden, and she has been acting steadily for the past decade.

But it was her performance as brilliant, traumatized, ferocious and feral computer hacker Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” that was her exit visa from Sweden.

All three films adapted from Larsson’s bestsellers became worldwide hits, with Hollywood quickly jumping in for David Fincher’s English-language remake of “Dragon Tattoo,” opening just days after “Sherlock Holmes.”

The world of Lisbeth — with her tattoos, body piercings and anarchic spirit — was not unknown to Rapace, who went on her own rebellious, punk-rocker tear in her early teens.

“There was a gap there when I was not into acting and I was against everything. First, I was into doing judo and kung fu. Then I was drinking a lot,” Rapace said. “So I kind of lost track for a while, then I came back, I pulled myself together and I decided when I was 15 that I’m going to get sober and I’m going to become an actress.”

Rooney Mara

Rooney Mara, AFP – LOS ANGELES – Actress Mara Rooney has scored a coup of quality and be the star of three Hollywood adaptations of wildly popular Stieg Larsson “Millennium Trilogy.”

Mara, 24, hails from upstate New York and will play against Daniel Craig Lisbeth Salander, 42, of James Bond fame.

U.S. actress has worked with director David Fincher in the past in “The Social Network.” In the end, the actress who also appeared in a “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie beat out a series of best young actresses interested in the plum role.

The first film, “Out Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” shot in Sweden and the United States and is expected in 2011.

Published in 44 countries, Larsson cult crime stories have sold over 40 million copies, says Sony.

A Swedish film adaptation of the work already done Larsson, Dane Niels Arden Oplev directed the first installment and the Swede Daniel Alfredson the other two.

Larsson died in 2004 aged 50 years before the book became a worldwide success.