Secret of Demelza’s dazzle

£12,000 earrings, a VERY daring dress designer, scarlet hair dye, £3.99 dry shampoo – oh, and ambition so fierce she bagged an agent at 11 . . .

WHEN Eleanor Tomlinson made her first red carpet appearance at the Deauville Film Festival in 2006, she was 14 years old and looked every inch the gawky schoolgirl, with her hair its natural dirty blonde and her teeth in traintrack braces.

A decade on, at this weekend’s Baftas, she’s been transformed into a veritable goddess. Her hair is now flaming red — dyed for her role as Demelza in the BBC’s Poldark — while her striking red-carpet look is the work of stylist Nisha Grewal.

Eleanor’s former schoolfriends in Beverley, East Yorkshire, must marvel at how the girl who was once bullied for her acting ambition has succeeded.

Leandra Culshaw, who taught her at the local Stagecoach drama school, said: ‘She has put our little town on the map!’

How did she do it? Well, for one, the showbiz gene is in Eleanor’s family. Her father, Malcolm, 56, is an actor whose TV credits include Emmerdale and The Bill. Her mother, Judith Hibbert, tours with her own one-woman show.

Malcolm recalls bringing his daughter onto the set of The Bill when she was around ten.

‘I couldn’t get someone to look after her, and the director said it was fine. ‘On the way home, Eleanor told me: “Daddy, I think I’d like to do some acting.”’

She and her younger brother, Ross, were enrolled in the local theatre school, and her talent was soon apparent.

When her father’s agent, Niki Winterson, came to stay for a weekend, Eleanor begged for Niki to take her on.

‘Eleanor went on and on about it,’ recalls Malcolm. ‘In the end my agent said, “Shut up, get some photographs done and I will see if anything turns up”.’

Eleanor tells a slightly different version of the story.

‘When I was 11, my dad’s agent came for dinner and I locked all the doors and refused to let her leave. She told me, “I don’t represent children” — and I said, “I don’t care, you’re gonna represent me because you’re not leaving until you do.” ‘It makes me cringe now.’ Within six weeks, she had a small role in an ITV featurelength drama, Falling, and from that she landed a film role in The Illusionist, playing a young Jessica Biel. It was filmed in Prague and her father went along as her chaperone.

He said: ‘She was very excited but she took it in her stride. She was quite shy and very much a home girl, but she accepted everything for what it was.’

The film moved her to another level. She changed agents and landed a three-picture deal with Paramount. The first was the teen drama Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging. Eleanor played Jas, the gorgeous friend of the lead actor.

At the premiere, the 16-yearold chose a deliberately olderthan-her-years black gown, slashed to the thigh with a leather-look bustier. Perhaps it was an act of defiance — because life away from the cameras had been difficult.

Eleanor says her fellow pupils at the all-girls Beverley High School picked on her relentlessly, although staff have declined to comment. She told an interviewer: ‘When I went back to school, I found I was a square peg in a round hole and I was bullied a lot because of it.

‘I was told I’d got too big for my boots, whereas in fact I was incredibly shy.

‘It’s incredible how horrible girls can be. It was psychological warfare. It was really hard to cope with.’

Even now, Eleanor — unusually for a TV star — has no social media presence because she can’t face online bullying.

‘Frankly, I don’t want to let trolls into my life,’ she said.

Eleanor later moved to a sixthform college. However, she failed her drama mock A-level after being absent for the exams. Soon after, she quit school.

Next came the bruising experience of a big-budget flop. Jack The Giant Slayer in 2013 sank virtually without a trace, despite its £140 million budget.

Then, in 2014, came another big break: she was cast opposite Aidan Turner in Poldark.

The two of them were famously required to take a ‘sizzle’ screen test to see if there was enough chemistry between them.

‘From the moment you start saying your lines, you can sense whether there’s something between you or not,’ she said.

‘They’ll make you read through a romantic scene to see whether there’s a frisson. You’re also aware of whether or not people are enjoying what they see.’

The first series was an instant hit, and a third will come to BBC One next month. Poldark has been called ‘the show that made Sundays sexy again’.

Eleanor insists there’s no romance with her hunky co-star, even though Aidan looks like a ‘God among men’.

She said earlier this month: ‘He’s beautiful to look at, so it’s hard not to fancy him, but fortunately we don’t feel like that about each other!

‘We’ve both got a temper, we’re both strong people. There are definitely similarities between us and our characters.’

Eleanor dated Turner’s stunt double, Ben Atkinson, for two years but that ended last summer. Recently, she filmed a role in a biopic of artist Vincent Van Gogh, and is determined the hard work won’t end there.

She said: ‘It’s a very competitive industry, so I feel very blessed that I’ve been given the opportunities that I have.

‘I guess that’s what fuels me — the fight to keep going. The hardest thing about this industry is not working.’