For her latest movie, Dina Meyer was determined not to play the babe, but that's a bit like Eddie Murphy trying not to play the black guy. Paul Byrne loses his heart to a Starship Trooper.

In Starship Troopers, Dina Meyer had to do a lot of difficult things. She had to travel to a faraway planet and fight giant bugs for a start. She also had to do so carrying a gun the weight of your average 10-year old, and wearing a suit that the Marquis De Sade would even find a little bit too restraining. But all of this paled beside Dina Meyer's one big problem with Starship Troopers - having to take her kit off with her fellow actors for a shower scene.

"I don't know, maybe because you're European it's a little bit easier for you," she smiles, "but for us Americans, it's kinda difficult to disrobe in front of mixed company."

I could be wrong, but I don't think being European makes exposing your privates to a room full of strangers any easier.

"There were 20 other people in the scene, plus a crew of about only five or six. You've been working with these people for about four months, so you've developed certain relationships with them, and now all of a sudden, you've being asked to take off your clothes and just hang out naked with them."

For most sane people, a veritable nightmare, but for one or two less bothered by social etiquette, a dawdle. Step forward the director of Starship Troopers, Paul Verhoeven, the man also responsible for Robocop, Total Recall and last year's megaflop, Showgirls.

"So Paul says, 'come on, what's the big deal? It's just your body - you've seen it before. You Americans, you're so ridiculous sometimes!' "So I said, okay, big shot, why don't you take off your clothes? So he did. And then he got his cameraman to do the same. After that, we all felt pretty silly, so we went ahead and stripped off. It felt pretty uncomfortable for about 10 minutes, but then we just forgot about what we weren't wearing and just shot the scene."

Having started out on the dreaded Beverly Hills 90210, Dina Meyer has been working her way steadily up the Hollywood ladder over the last four years. Scoring parts in the disastrous Johnny Mnemonic (opposite Keanu Reeves) and the notably better Dragonheart, the considerably babe-like Meyer has always set out to play the anti-babe roles. And that's why she turned down the original part offered to her in Starship Troopers in favour of a rougher, tougher role.

"I originally read for the part of Carmen, the squeaky clean babe in the movie - you know, great body, beautiful face, the whole shebang - but I just found myself drawn to the role of Dizzy, because she was someone who was willing to get her hands dirty, to speak her own mind, and to be one of the boys to get what she wanted. So Paul gave me the part of Dizzy instead."

A sci-fi adventure of a particularly B-movie bent, Starship Troopers concerns a bunch of outrageously pretty high school graduates who all end up joining the Federal Services just in time to go to war against a hostile planet of giant bugs. It is, of course, enormously silly, but it also happens to be enormously violent.

"When you're making the movie, you really have no idea what the end result is going to be," states Meyer. "On my first day on the set, I saw all this carnage, all these amputated bodies lying around the set, and you just walk on by and get your scene done. But when I saw the actual movie on the big screen, I was overwhelmed - it just blew me away.

"But my feeling about Starship Troopers is that it's a deliberately cartoonish movie. It's a video game with a very big budget, and I don't think it really would have much of an effect on your average teenager."

Dina's effect on the average teenager is probably one of Starship Troopers' strongest assets, but, citing her influences as Glenn Close, Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange, she's determined to keep her looks secondary to her talents.

"I'm not saying I'm out to play ugly girls," she finishes, "it's just that if the part is attractive, I want her to have something else. Don't let her just be the shining light - I want to be able to scare the pants off a man just as easily as charm them off him (laughs)."