Isla Fisher I Surpassed My Wildest Imagination'

This Pocket Rocket Has Carved a Career Out of Tapping Into Her ‘inner Idiot’, Even Though She’s Anything but

Breaking into the biz isn’t easy, even successful Aussie star Isla Fisher struggled getting her foot in the industry door. ‘When I first started acting at 11, I had everything against me. I was [157cm tall], I was a redhead, I was a woman, I was from Perth,’ she says. ‘I mean, nothing’s changed…’

The pint-sized 43-year-old actress is as real as the rest of us – and that’s why we love her! One look at her faux-diva TV ads for ING Direct and it’s obvious she doesn’t take herself too seriously – but that’s not to say Isla isn’t the real deal as far as talent goes!

In 1993, she made her professional acting debut in Australian TV shows Bay City and Paradise Beach, and the following year she took up residence in Summer Bay as Shannon Reed. ‘Home and Away taught me how to look good in a bikini,’ she jokes. ‘And how to deliver bad dialogue convincingly – a skill that really helped in the early days of my career.’

With her convincing skills down pat, Isla made her Hollywood debut in 2002’s Scooby Doo. But it wasn’t until she played ‘stage-five clinger’ Gloria in Wedding Crashers in 2005 that Tinseltown really took a shining to the rising star. And in 2009, the ‘ginger’ from Down Under proved she could pull in the big bucks at the box office when she starred as retail addict Rebecca Bloomwood in Confessions of a Shopaholic.