Hetta Carbury Paloma Baeza Assets: incorruptible; independent. Prospects: a marriage of convenience to her cousin Roger Carbury or true happiness with young engineer Paul Montague. Rebel Heart star Paloma Baeza is getting used to playing characters who fall for actor Cillian Murphy. Paloma first became friends with Cillian when they were making an American film about Irish students working in America, called Sunburn. Their characters became an item. In The Way We Live Now, Baeza's character Hetta is under great pressure from her mother, Lady Carbury, to marry her cousin Roger. But instead she falls for Cillian's character, Paul Montague, a young engineer caught up in a dream of building a great transcontinental railway. The two actors have just collaborated on the making of a short film, Watchmen. Baeza, whose real-life partner is writer Alex Garland (author of the novel The Beach), and Cillian wrote the piece, and she made her directing debut with it. "I won't give up acting, but the skills of acting and directing complement one another brilliantly. On the first night of the filming I felt a complete fraud saying all those on-set things directors say. But after a while, you just focus on getting things done. I've learnt a lot about acting through directing and writing, and I think I'm a better actor now because you see the process as a whole rather than just the part you play in it," she says. "Living with the Carburys is a nightmare! Being a Carbury is a nightmare! The expectation that she will marry her cousin is forced on her every day. Then all of a sudden Paul walks in and turns her life upside down." Baeza thoroughly enjoyed the role of Hetta, and especially teaming up with the other members of her "family" -- Cheryl Campbell and Matthew MacFadyen. "We became friends and used to meet up together when we hadn't been filming for a bit to have lunch or a drink, so when filming started again we wouldn't come in cold." Baeza, whose father is Mexican, started acting at school. Her career took off while she was studying English and Drama at university. She did the BBC's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and No Bananas. Soon afterwards she played Bathsheba in Far From the Madding Crowd. Recent credits include Anna Karenina, Waking the Dead and Feeny in Rebel Heart. Films include A Connecticut Yankee in King's Arthur's Court, All Forgotten and Gillies MacKinnon's The Escapist. Her latest theatre appearance was the critically acclaimed Navy Pier at the Soho Theatre.