Isabel Lucas to transform into Hollywood star

WHEN Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hits cinemas on Thursday, audiences will be treated to a different side of former Home and Away star Isabel Lucas.

The action sequel to 2007′s hugely successful Transformers features Lucas vamping it up as Alice, a student bombshell trying to seduce co-star Shia LaBeouf.

“It’s so enjoyable playing a character that’s so different from yourself, because you can really go and take risks,” Lucas told The Sunday Mail while in Sydney for the premiere of the film, also starring Megan Fox and Josh Duhamel.

To listen to US tabloid gossip, however, it’s art imitating life for the LA-based starlet who lived briefly in Kakadu National Park before moving to Cairns.

For the past 12 months she has been pitted at the centre of a love triangle between her co-star LaBeouf and her ex-boyfriend, Entourage’s Adrian Grenier, who apparently called it quits after learning Lucas was in a car accident while LaBeouf was behind the wheel.

“Me and Adrian, unfortunately we broke up like a month before that car accident happened (in the middle of last year), I didn’t even know Shia at the time,” she revealed.

Despite raking in more than $A880 million worldwide the first time around, the release of the Transformers sequel will be competing against Ice Age 3 and tween sensation Miley Cyrus’s Hannah Montana: The Movie during this school holiday season.

But things look right on target in Australia for the tale about shape-shifting alien robots fighting their war on Earth being another box office smash.

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen pre-sale figures are the biggest for the year and the second biggest ever, behind the last Harry Potter,” said Michelle Vecchio, national film marketing manager for Birch Carroll and Coyle.

It’s not the first time an Aussie has cracked the Transformer ranks. Tasmanian-born Rachel Taylor popped up in the original flick as Maggie Madsen.

Since leaving Home and Away, Lucas – who now calls Melbourne home when she’s not in LA – has roles in four projects due for release over the next year, including Stephen Spielberg’s mini-series The Pacific and Daybreakers with Ethan Hawke.