A date with fate is nothing new to 24-year-old actress Leelee Sobieski.

From that lucky moment in 1994 when a casting agent discovered Sobieski in the cafeteria of a New York City school at age 11, this blonde bombshell has delivered many great performances. Her roles have included Joan of Arc, a modern Lolita in Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" and the virginal Cécile de Volanges in "Les Liaisons dangereuses."

Fate also intervened in Sobieski's portrayal of Alberta, an endearing dominatrix in the 2007 Canadian film "Walk All Over Me." For more than a year director Robert Cuffley pursued Sobieski to star in this tale about a naïve girl who heads to the big city. After turning him down, Sobieski one day changed her mind. Fortuitously the part was still open when she called Cuffley.

In every case beauty and brains have kept Sobieski shining since she hit the big time with "Deep Impact," one of 1998's top summer movies.

Now the Emmy and Golden Globe nominee flaunts her killer acting skills in "88 Minutes," a taut new thriller from director Jon Avnet.

In it Sobieski plays Lauren Douglas, a gifted student of Dr. Jack Gramm (Al Pacino), a college professor who moonlights as a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI.

As the film starts, Gramm's expert testimony has landed a serial killer (Neal McDonough) on death row. Everything in this charming criminologist's life seems golden. He's nailed the bad guy. He's got a Porsche, a designer condo and a hip haircut. His female students are all babes. Some, in fact, lust after Gramm even though he is a little long in the tooth.

Then one day this brilliant, impulsive hero answers his phone. A mysterious voice bears a deadly message: "You got the wrong man...You have 88 minutes to live. Eighty-eight minutes, Dr. Gramm. Tick tock."

The call sparks a relentless, real-time countdown in which Gramm tears through the city of Seattle in search of answers that could save his life.

The one that almost got away

Ironically, Sobieski's long friendship with "Fried Green Tomatoes" director Avnet nearly cost her this part.

"Jon and I became very close while we were working on 'Uprising.' We were almost like family," says Sobieski. Avnet hired Sobieski to star in the 2001 TV movie about Warsaw Ghetto Jews who rose up against the Nazis in 1943. The role earned Sobieski a Golden Globe nomination for best actress in 2002.

"Jon was almost resistant to casting me because he saw me the way I really was," says Sobieski. "I'm not remotely like Lauren in real life. I had to read for Jon. He had to see the possibility of the character in me."

Once Avnet was convinced Sobieski was given three hours to accept the role. "It was like, if you want to do this, you better really want to do this, and you better be able to decide now," says Sobieski. "Jon wanted to know that everybody was going to work hard."

Picture perfect

In preparation Sobieski dug into the world of forensics and serial killers. Her research included listening to an audiotape by Dr. Helen Morrison, author of the book "My Life Among the Serial Killers - Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers."

"Morrison was stalked by a serial killer, so her book was very helpful. But I also watched TV shows," says Sobieski. "Forensic shows like 'CSI' have an enormous amount of information in them."

As Sobieski says, "You always worry about getting it right. Lauren is a complicated character. I tried to make the differences between her and me believable so that they wouldn't be differences on screen. But there's another side to her that I kept in my head just for myself - just to make her real to me."

The fame game

This role marks the long road Sobieski has travelled from the precocious teen who once collected locks of hair from fellow film stars. "I stopped that the second I hit 19," says Sobieski. "It was funny and cute when I was younger."

Where other tabloid starlets today bank on cuteness or DUI craziness to keep the media spotlight, Sobieski does not.

"I have no idea why people see me in a different way than other actresses. It's really nice and I sometimes get scared that it's going to go away when people find out what a real pain in the tush I am," says Sobieski. "If there is a difference I think it comes down to how my parents raised me."

Sobieski's father, Jean Sobieski, is a French painter and artist who appeared in spaghetti Westerns during his youth. Her mother, American novelist and screenwriter Elizabeth Salomon, works as Sobieski's manager. Together they provided Sobieski with a bohemian upbringing filled with visits to SoHo art galleries and Shakespeare in the Park.

"My parents surrounded me with a lot of love and a lot of interesting adults at a very young age. That made me feel like I was equal to adults even as a child," says Sobieski. As a result this articulate actress has held her own on and off film sets.

"I still feel like I'm on an equal plane when I talk to someone," says Sobieski. "I think that's what people appreciate most about me."