How we’ve missed our buddy Holly. Nearly 60 issues and 1,800 days may have passed since FHM’s last meeting, but nothing about her has changed. The body’s still stunning; the sense of humour’s still coarse; the outer persona’s still laid-back; the inner persona’s still fiery. At 25, her career may have entered stage three (Operation: Break Hollywood), but Holly Valance is still the girl FHM fell in love with as soon as she entered our lives as 16-year-old Ramsay Street schoolgirl Felicity ‘Flick’ Scully. The girl who, just after she’d turned 20, told FHM the joke: “What do you tell a girl with two black eyes? Nothing, she’s already been told twice.” The girl FHM bought a business class ticket to Purgatory.
“After my first shoot I got a letter from a priest condemning me for posing in a bikini,” she recalls. “It was hilarious! I was going to Hell as far as he was concerned. I was like: ‘Dude,
I was already going to Hell.’”
And, somewhat inevitably, she’s going there via Hollywood. West Hollywood, to be exact, a suburb where she shares a house with Aussie actor Alex O’Loughlin. And where, after four years’ hard graft, she’s beginning to flourish. High-profile cameos in Prison Break and Entourage have been followed by a scene-stealing, ass-kicking turn in DOA: Dead or Alive.
Later this year she’ll be appearing in Scott Caan’s Mercy and an as yet unnamed comedy by Kevin Connolly (E in Entourage). And this month she’s hitting a screen near you as the pop princess ‘Diva’ in Luc Besson’s hostage drama Taken – a film where her character advises against going into the music industry because of the intense publicity. Something Holly has highlighted before, in fact.
“I wouldn’t go as far as saying don’t do it,” she says. “But I don’t agree with the paparazzi stalking you. That’s kind of gross. There are people who like it. But they are obsessed with celebrity, not with acting or music. They cannot be out of the public eye; it would destroy their ego.”
Like Paris Hilton, say. Someone Holly has shared both a filmset () and a toilet with. “She pushed in front of everyone and walked in with a bunch of friends,” recalls Holly. “I was like: ‘How fucking rude is that?’ Of course, I said something when I was working with her. I’m a loudmouth, I always say something.”
She does. It’s one of the reasons she’s more than just a hot face and body. Another is the fact she realises her actions speak louder than words. Hence why her summer holiday entails going on a government-shaming charity mission to Eastern European mental asylums. “I’m going to need some serious therapy, but who gives a shit if I am upset? A few ugly pictures in my life is nothing, these people live this way.”
And why she’s back on the front cover of your favourite magazine. “It’s good to be back!” she shouts at us. “I haven’t done a sexy shoot for a while and I’ve felt left out. You guys do your 100 Sexiest each year and from what I hear, I haven’t been polling well, so I need to remind your readers who I am. Out of interest, where was I this year?