Try and remember this name: will they go Nuts about Nutsa?

Newcomer Nutsa Kukhianidze plays a golden-hearted hooker to Nick Nolte's good-natured junkie in Neil Jordan's The Good Thief--and more than holds her own in a sea of testosterone. Of being the only woman on the set, the 19-year-old says, "It was like a three-month adventure of The Magnificent Seven [1960] and the little sister."

Born in the Republic of Georgia, Kukhianidze moved in 1993 to Atlanta, Georgia, with her family. In 1998 they returned to the republic's capital city of Tbilisi, and she began a run of stirring film roles in which she bewitches older men: In her feature debut, 27 Missing Kisses (2000), Kukhianidze romances a man her father's age; then came Nolte; up next, the gamine seduces the movies' perennial cradle robber, Jeremy Irons, in Mathilde. She hasn't completely left the U.S. behind, though. Sounding like a red-white-and-blue--blooded American teen, the actress explains how she blew some of her Thief paycheck on a green Jeep. "I drive around all day. I have clothes in my car, music, chocolate . . . It's great."

Thelma Adams is a regular Interview contributor.

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