Melissa George on new BBC drama Hunted I'm layered. I'm complex. I'm dark. I'm funny. I'm also incredibly assertive. The girls in Australia are raised the same as the boys. It's wonderful because Australian women grow up very independent. We can lift everything ourselves. We can screw stuff into the wall - the strength that brings to a role like Sam Hunter is important. She's talking about strength both mental and physical, it transpires. The challenge was to train me to not punch for real. I was really making contact. A lot of stunt people round London have the bruises. Because I couldn't switch off. Complex, tough and at times quite frightening (should you happen to bring up her earliest role in the Aussie soap Home and Away), it is easy to believe that George doesn't pull her punches. Hunted is not exactly nuanced drama but it is written by Frank Spotnitz, one of the forces behind The X-Files and Strike Back, and as such is criminally addictive. It is George's performance, though, that lifts it above mere phooey. It is a first series lead for the 36 year-old, whose career has spanned everything from Home and Away to Grey's Anatomy. Born in Perth, "miles away from anywhere," she is a self-conscious industry outsider. She is, for example, perhaps the only Hollywood actress who was a youth roller-skating champion. She turns up for our interview in femme fatale mode - head-to-toe black with crimson lipstick against snow-white skin. The effect is either enhanced or completely undercut by the fact we are in a drab side room in Television Centre, on a cloudy Monday, but it all feels appropriate for an hour in the company of possibly the most eccentric actress I have ever met. For example, though we talk at some length about kicking and punching people for fun, when I ask her if she relishes the physical stuff she says, "No, actually, to be really honest." No? I physically can do it. Not a lot of actresses can do it. But I don't want to keep doing it. I want to do Downton Abbey! I don't want to be pigeonholed as the action girl because honestly I don't see myself that way. I see myself more as somebody sitting on the sofa doing a great monologue than kicking ass. This is a reference to In Treatment, the 2008 drama in which each episode consisted of a succession of consultations between a psychiatrist, played by Gabriel Byrne, and one of his long-standing patients. George played Laura, an anaesthetist fixated on her shrink, and she was nominated for a Golden Globe for an astonishing performance that showed an elegant woman slowly disintegrating over eight weeks. Add In Treatment to The Slap (in which she was again brilliant as a near-neurotic earth mother) and now the conflicted Hunter and the conclusion has to be that George is at her best doing "damaged." I've had a life, I've got stories, things I've been through. To me it's a great pleasure to get it out on screen," she says.These "things she's been through" began with Home and Away. She left Perth to go to Sydney and make the series aged 15. I left home very, very young so I raised myself. That came with a lot of experiences one shouldn't have to go through. Could she say what those experiences were? I don't want to talk about that... you're 15 years old and you're alone. She moved to Hollywood four years later and landed a series with fellow Home and Away alumnus Heath Ledger called Roar. She was cast in Alias, then in a successful, at least commercially, remake of The Amityville Horror, then in Grey's Anatomy. In Hollywood terms her career has been long and fruitful - she has never been out of work - but Hunted is her first lead. I'm proud that the roles I've taken, whether people recognise me or not, are very diverse. Everyone's like, "She hasn't had that break-out role," but then other people beg to differ. I land roles like In Treatment, The Slap and now Hunted. [Yet] I can't get an animation or a role in Avengers if I paid for it. But I hope to. Luckily for her there is a lucrative sideline. I've got a huge patent business. I invented a product that was the number one product on QVC for three years. It's the highest grossing infomercial ever. Again, some actors might keep quiet about their domination of home shopping, but not George. Her product is called, "HemmingMyWay," a name that in itself ought to win some kind of award. It's like an adhesive snap. You can have two hem lengths at the same time. We can scoff all we like: HemmingMyWay has made her a lot of money, she says. It's allowed me to take time off and pick roles that I loved. As for roles she doesn't love, I am told in advance that she really doesn't want to talk about Home and Away, and she says as much during the interview, twice. "I feel like people perceive me as the actress from 20 years ago... It's not very helpful when you're trying to build a career." But she admits it is at least striking how a daytime Aussie soap has incubated so many actors who've gone on to mainstream success. They write the show really well and they give you really diverse topics to play. You're shooting a lot per day, they're great at promoting their stars and they let you leave the show when you want to go - perfect! Home and Away has contributed Guy Pearce, Heath Ledger, Chris Hemsworth and Isla Fisher to a burgeoning Antipodean contingent in Hollywood. George has American citizenship now, but she classifies herself as an "Australian-American." As an Aussie you feel like the best kept secret. You can play American, look American, sound American - because we were raised with American TV. Yet if things go bad you can always go home. So you have this back-up plan which allows you to be free to make more mistakes. Hunted starts on BBC One on Thursday 4 October at 9pm