Nathalie Kelley Pictures

Nathalie Kelley was born in Lima, Peru in 1985.

Kelley might have been raised in Peru if her French-born mother hadn't divorced her Argentine father and married an Irishman who brought the family to Australia.

She was raised and educated in Sydney's North Sydney Girls High School, the same school as Nicole Kidman.

The young actor, who has been torn between show business and an academic life, says she never met Kidman but the 38-year-old superstar has been a long-time inspiration.

When she was 16 she became a salsa dancer which helped her get the money to finish education. Also "The Miss Latin America competition" earned for her a much-needed $1000 and the next thing she took a year off and went to Brazil.

The things Kelley saw there prompted her to shun show business and come home to launch herself into a social science degree.

Kelley was three years into the degree when she came back into the performing fold to take the title role for the Aaron Spelling-produced TV pilot Mermaid.

She determined to finish her course one day and even to go on to do a PhD, but in the meantime she often feel torn between two worlds.

Kelley went to Los Angeles and told agents she wanted to be in the sort of films she had grown up with mainly serious art-house productions, but was warned that such single-mindedness would send her broke.

And in the end she opted for The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) because the character of Neela in the film is such a strong individual. She's not simply a trophy girlfriend who is a pushover for the first attractive Anglo-Saxon boy who comes along.

While director Justin Lin is on the record as saying Kelley is one of those irresistible stars whose presence demands we watch her on the big screen, she was more preoccupied with the driving.

Kelley, who had only recently earned her driver's license and had only driven automatics, had a huge learning curve when it came to using a gear lever, timing, braking and understanding the art of drifting.