Look at me! Is this how a sex icon is supposed to look?" Angelina Jolie laughs incredulously as she stands clutching a hot-water bottle, wearing an old dressing gown, her wet hair wrapped in a grubby towel. Yet her eyes sparkle, her skin glows, and every so often a radiant smile flashes across her full lips, fading gradually into a long, low feline purr.

There is no other word for it: Angelina Jolie is sexy. Sexy as in strong, stunning, give-me-what-l-want-or-you'll-have-to-pay sexy. Which is why she was chosen to breathe life into Lara Croft, the world's most popular virtual sex icon. Intrepid, sensual and tough, Lady Lara fights like a man but has the body of a cartoon fantasy woman. British director Simon West (Con Air, The General's Daughter) decided Jolie was the perfect - indeed, only - actor to help him translate the Tomb Raider games into a multi-million- dollar action bonanza.

Jolie and I meet in London's Pinewood Studios, where the reek of chlorine lingers in the chilly air. It is coming from the centrepiece of the set - an enormous pool filled with bubbling water. The studio is done out like a cave full of stalactites and the effect is fantastically outlandish and overwhelming. This is one of the tombs, where, according to West, "the gloves are off and everything is possible," and where Lara has to find a mystical item that will, naturally, save the planet.

Jolie glides out of the freezing water and her solid, muscular body strides smoothly across the room towards the camera. Jolie is not perturbed by the prospect of being a sex symbol. "For me ever to be considered for something like that is nothing but flattering. I'm never offended by being considered sexy. It's frightening to fill Lara's boots and to match up to what people see in her, but 1 think sex is a great thing and I love it. I guess some- one is sexy if sex is on their mind." She flashes a frisky smile.

The reason why sex is so much on Jolie's mind at the moment is twofold. First, she is dying to see her husband, actor-writer~ director Billy Bob Thornton,(A Simple Plan, All the Pretty Horses), whom she met on the set of 1999's Pushing Tin and married in Las Vegas in May last year. At 46, Thornton is 20 years his wife's senior and they make a striking couple. Whatever it is, it's definitely working for Jolie. It has been eight months now since she started work on the film, and it's obvious that she craves him like a junkie needs a fix. "We're addicted to each other," she concurs. "He only visited me once because flying makes him sick, so I think over these eight months I must have gone back 30 times. I've gone back just to have him for six hours. I'm kind of an insane woman and 1 send him odd faxes and call him all the time and talk to him when I'm failing asleep so 1 feel like he's next to me."

The second reason for Jolie's lust for lust is that she had to undergo three gruelling months of training prior to the shoot, which has given her a new attitude to her body. "I feel stronger than I have ever been - especially in my mind. It's like I've stepped up to bat and I'm ready for a game. The problem is that I tend to be a little too up for a fight lately. My answer to everything is just to go outside and have it out. I'm a little jumpy." Jolie laughs and pauses before returning to the subject of her husband. "I think Billy is excited because he knows I want him. I am very focused on him. I am hunting him down. He'll just have to brace himself because I knock him over every time I see him."

Taking on the role of Lara was extremely physically demanding for Jolie, who insisted on doing most of the stunt scenes herself. Her stunt coordinator calls her "the most stubborn woman I have ever met" and admires her ability to learn a fight sequence or a dangerous jump quicker than many professional stuntwomen. Jolie obviously relishes the challenge. "It's a good pain, it's a good fight! It gives you a tough skin and it feels kind of good. But it's going to be so strange going back into the normal world because wherever I am I'm going to think, 'Oh, I can just jump over that,' or, 'I can throw that in the air.' I know I am a little too crazy like that right now."

Back in the normal world, stranger things await Jolie than mere gravity. The Tomb Raider merchandise will introduce the world to Jolie the plastic doll. "Seeing yourself in plastic is just one of the most bizarre things that can happen to you. I can just imagine someone taking the head off and setting it on fire or sticking me upside down in mud".

Despite winning an Oscar for Girl, Interrupted, Jolie has so far managed to keep her private life just that, and she is not prepared for worldwide megastardom. Apart from confronting herself in miniature, she refuses to be part of the fame industry. Unusually for a Hollywood star, she has no publicist and no entourage of assistants. "Everybody went crazy when I went shopping alone at Harrods the other day. I was like: what the hell? Nothing has changed in my life and nothing is going to and I think that's a choice you make. In my life, I am really private. We just bought a home, me and my husband. We didn't worry about where it was and whether it was public, because 1 don't expect that to matter. If that happens, it's just going to be really awful because we are going to have to move."

For now, though, Jolie is concentrating on furnishing the new house in Hollywood. "When I went to Harrods, I couldn't figure out what furniture to get and I really hate to shop, so Harrods nearly killed me. I went into the kid's section and I was playing with toy things. I ordered a life-size horse for our new house." And visitors to Jolie's new abode will find that the horse is not the only interesting aspect. "Billy did a film where he played a barber and was electrocuted. So there's probably going to be a barber's chair at one end of the dining table and an electric chair at the other," she explains, without batting an eyelid. "In the film, Lara has an electric chair in her bedroom, which is my own personal little thing I thought she should have."

The daughter of Jon Voight (who also plays her father in Tomb Raider) and actress Marcheline Bertrand, Jolie began studying acting at the age of 11 at the prestigious Lee Strasberg Theatre in New York. At 16, having abandoned her ambition to become a funeral director, Jolie started modelling and appeared in music videos for Lenny Kravitz, the Rolling Stones and Meat Loaf. After a short stint of film studies at New York University, she went back to acting and joined the Met Theatre Group in LA. Her first movie role was as a human/machine hybrid in the 1993 straight-to-video sci-fi flick Cyborg ll: Class Shadow. Her second movie, Hackers, was a little more watchable, but Jolie received her first big break playing lesbian supermodel Gia Carangi, who dies of Aids, in the 1998 TV movie Gia, for which she won a Golden Globe.

As anyone who meets Jolie soon realises, she is never one to play by the rules, and her behaviour has raised the odd eyebrow. For a start, there are the more-than-sisterly displays of affection towards her brother James - she kissed him full on the mouth at last year's Oscars - and then there's the steadily increasing number of tattoos, not to mention her growing knife collection. All these things have bolstered her reputation as Hollywood's eccentric enfant terrible.

Jolie undoubtedly has a dark side, and she seems to like pain. She is determined not to "numb out in any possible way", but instead "feel everything that hurts". For her, happiness is one big adrenaline rush - a rollercoaster ride that gets you down as often as it gets you high. It's this love of the extreme that made her write Jonny Lee Miller's name on her shirt in her own blood when they married in 1995 after meeting on the set of Hackers. The marriage didn't last long, but Jolie's penchant for rather painful expressions of love did. She beams with excitement when talking about her and Thornton's plans to get married again "in every possible way", as she mysteriously puts it. When asked whether the memoirs of the Marquis de Sade might inspire the ceremony, her smile is suggestive: "All I can tell you is that we'll get a little crazy!"

Whatever goes on behind their bedroom door, Tomb Raider memorabilia is likely to spice things up even further. For the bungee- jumping scenes, Jolie had to wear a harness to protect her nether regions. "After a week it got a little sore, so the stunt crew made me a fur-lined harness. It was a joke, but I'm taking it home and I'll see what Billy and I can do with it," she says, with another big laugh.

Everyone on the set seems to have fallen in love with "Angie", as fellow Tomb Raider cast member Daniel Craig affectionately calls her. It's not difficult to see why; she's like a walking turbo engine steaming with energy and enthusiasm. The team who made Lara Croft's four-wheel- drive Defender even agreed to customise a car for Jolie to drive at home in Los Angeles.

Jolie is also planning to take Lara's guns home with her: "I'm going to be a nightmare to live with after this movie. I'm going to have all these guns, weapons, swords and gun holsters." Having already signed an option to do two more Tomb Raider movies, she has clearly bonded with her screen character - to the extent that the line between her and the virtual Lara has started to blur. She seems very happy about the new dimension her screen persona has lent her own personality: "I love Lara. I love the things she does and I'm very happy leading her life." She has even said that Lara is the kind of woman she would date: "The strangest thing is that she actually looks like me. Our skin, our hair and our bodies are just the same. That's pretty scary." Yet, while Jolie may have taken on some of Lara's mannerisms, it is really Lara who has gained from Jolie. Director Simon West emphasises that without Jolie in the title role he would not have directed the movie. "I didn't want Lara Croft to be a whiter-than- white character who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. I wanted her to be an adrenaline junkie who is in it for the thrills, lives on the edge and whose morals are just on the right side. Angelina is all of those things. She is dangerous and very sexy. She is not afraid of her sex appeal, but she is using it. Not in a titillating way - she is just an earthy, sexy, powerful woman."

Jolie's break is over and it's time for her to go back in the water. As she takes off her robe and a stylist retouches the make-up covering the tattoos on her arms, I see something that bothers me. I've been told by a reliable source that those breasts are real. However - and this is weird - though she's wearing only a flimsy tank top in freezing water, there's no sign of her nipples. Maybe it's just the magic of movie-making, but somehow Jolie is almost too much like Lara Croft to be real.