Camilla Belle was 10 years old when she was first attacked by prehistoric beasts.

The young actress encountered a pack of hostile reptiles in the opening sequence of Steven Spielberg’s ‘’Jurassic Park’’ sequel ‘’The Lost World’’ back in 1997, and since then she’s appeared in a diverse array of projects that have seen her play the daughter of both Daniel Day-Lewis and Steven Seagal .

And now, in what may be her highest-profile role to date, she’s once again under attack from creatures from long ago. In the upcoming ‘’10,000 BC’’, directed by ‘’Independence Day’’ demolition man Roland Emmerich, Belle plays Evolet, kidnapped from her prehistoric tribe by a band of mysterious raiders. A group of hunters, led by D’Leh (Steven Strait), sets out on a perilous journey to rescue her, encountering mammoths, sabretooth tigers and all manner of old-time monsters along the way.

Belle is refreshingly candid about the project – while she clearly enjoyed the process of making the big-budget blockbuster in various exotic locations around the world and has found the finished product to be an exciting, visually spectacular popcorn picture, she also admits that “it’s not deep whatsoever”.

“On films like this, you can’t really go too deep,” she says. “Well, I can’t because I’d feel a bit silly! With what the business has come to now, you really do have to make films like this in order to make a name for yourself and be able to finance your passion projects. I’ve shied away from so many sequels and remakes and comic-book adaptations – they really are the same thing over and over again. But this presents itself in a different way.”
“I think the title 10,000 BC is supposed to evoke this time before recorded history – a legend or a myth,” adds Belle’s co-star Strait, previously seen in ‘’Sky High’’ and ‘’The Covenant’’. “It’s certainly not a textbook film. It’s more like folklore that was passed down.”

While prehistoric tales have been brought to the screen in the past (Raquel Welch and her fur bikini in ‘’One Million Years BC’’ springs to mind...okay, maybe just my mind), it’s been a while since cavemen and creatures slugged it out in cinemas. And the advent of cutting-edge special effects technology, the opportunity is there for filmmakers to conjure up something quite eye-opening.

“There are so many factors you take into account when choosing a project, and this one had many,” says Belle. “I’ve never seen a prehistoric film before, certainly not recently and not on this scale. And when someone like Roland is attached, you know he makes these kinds of films very, very well. This is his forte, so he’s someone you can trust with a film of this magnitude. There’s not a lot of dialogue, which I actually think is good – it would detract from the visual aspect of the film, which is really so beautiful. I think the focus should be on what you’re seeing rather than what you’re hearing. It enables you to get lost in the film. It’s a popcorn movie, to be honest, a fun movie to enjoy.”

Strait was equally taken with Emmerich’s vision of ‘’10,000 BC’’, citing the director’s involvement as the “first and foremost” reason for signing on to play the courageous D’Leh. “Being able to work with Roland, because I’ve been a fan of his for so long and really respected the way he makes films – the visions and specificity of these large projects,” he adds “But also when I first read the script, the originality of what he was trying to do was definitely appealing. There are so many sequels and prequels that the newness of how the whole thing sounded was something I really appreciated. Working with this huge crew and presenting this huge idea, which really has no template, he did it all with such grace. I so respected how he executed it every day. He really made it comfortable for me, as an actor, to take risks.”

Surprisingly, only one week of ‘’10,000 BC’’’s filming was shot against a green screen that would then allow the filmmakers to digitally insert the movie’s prehistoric predators. Otherwise, the film’s six-month shooting schedule saw Belle, Strait and their fellow cast members travel to South Africa, Namibia and New Zealand (“the mountains there are so beautiful it almost looks fake,” laughs Belle). For Strait, it was a physically demanding process – “I lost about 40 pounds in about a month and a half before the film,” he says. “I did a lot of training to get a place where the character looks as if he’s living in the wild, hunting his food. And to shoot the scenes of fighting or hunting, it really is days and days of running and physical activity.”

However, there were still many times during the shoot that the actors were required to use their imaginations and react to pieces of gaffer tape that would eventually become computer-generated creatures.

According to Belle, such a task was just as challenging as acting alongside the likes of Oscar winner Day-Lewis, who played her father in the acclaimed indie drama ‘’The Ballad of Jack and Rose’’. “Working with someone like Daniel, you’re challenging your creative self and seeing how far you can push yourself,” she says. “Then working opposite pieces of tape is something that pushes you in a completely different way – you can feel so silly. You just want to stand back and laugh at yourself, but you keep on going. At least all of us are in it together.”

Strait agrees that acting to thin air or an inanimate object can initially feel a little dopey. “Once you get the past that feeling of absurdity that comes with acting towards a tennis ball in front of 500 people on the crew, it’s actually a bit freeing,” he laughs. “If you allow your imagination to run with it, you work with whatever you want. It’s all your head, and you become like a child playing with your imaginary friends in the park. It’s a very cool experience once you get into the rhythm of it.”

Plus, he says, “I don’t want to offend the tennis ball – it’s got a huge ego”.

Belle acknowledges that having a director like Emmerich, no stranger to special effects after movies like ‘’Independence Day’’, ‘’Godzilla’’ and ‘’The Day After Tomorrow’’, helped somewhat. “But there’s only so much you can say,” she laughs, before launching into a fairly accurate imitation of the filmmaker’s German accent: “‘OK, the mammoth is coming after you now. Run! Run! Look over your right shoulder! Run!’ We’d be taking the piss out of each other and the situation.”

Belle has been in front of the camera as a model and actor since she was nine months old, and admits that her early years were just a fun experience of travelling and meeting different people more than anything else. It wasn’t until she decided to take a three-year break at the age of 13 and focus on school and her social life that she realised how much she missed acting. At 16, she started reading scripts again, which is when The Ballad of Jack and Rose presented itself.

“I was coming of age as a person while making that film, and I found that that serious kind of acting was something I was passionate about,” she says. “From then, I really wanted to keep working.”

Since then, Belle has alternated between independent projects like ‘’The Chumscrubber’’ (opposite an all-star cast that included Jamie Bell, Glenn Close and Ralph Fiennes) and more high-concept fare like the remake of ‘’When a Stranger Calls’’ and the upcoming ‘’Push’’, an action movie she filmed in Hong Kong last year with ‘’Blood Diamond’’’s Djimon Hounsou and ‘’Fantastic Four’’’s Chris Evans.

In the meantime, there’s the action-packed adventure of ‘’10,000 BC’’ opening next month. “Evolet’s not fighting the mammoths and she’s not in the big battles but she does fight for herself,” says Belle. “She’s got a very strong personality and she’s fighting in a more cerebral way against this bad guy who’s kidnapped her.”
“Put it this way,” she adds with a laugh, “there’s a lot of running away from things.”

10,000 BC opens in cinemas on March 6.

- GUY DAVIS