THE Cove’s popularity will please Isabel Lucas. The former Home and Away star was one of several people arrested in the port of Taiji in 2007 protesting against dolphin slaughter. Footage of their surfboard blockade features in The Cove. Lucas was recently in Japan promoting her latest film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which opens here this week. She says there haven’t been any repercussions. “We weren’t particularly worried because it was such a vague arrest,” she tells Reel Time. The charge was “interfering with international commerce”. “I didn’t mention or bring it up while I was there because it wasn’t the time or the place and the Japanese people were very hospitable and very gracious, and I was there to talk about the film,” she adds, referring to the second Transformers film, another bombastic blockbuster from director Michael Bay, which could be a career maker for the young actress. “It is a different character that I haven’t really played before,” she says, and one she is under strict instructions from Bay not to talk about in detail. Let’s just say the character is a little Sam Worthington or Hugo Weaving. Producer Steven Spielberg’s people asked to see her audition after watching her performance in the coming World War II miniseries The Pacific, which filmed largely in Melbourne. That series will be seen on Seven next year.