Tiny, birdlike Thandie Newton, looking all proper and ladylike with a smooth do and wearing a wee cardigan, is in fact all proper and ladylike most of the time.

She glides gracefully in perilously high heels to a round table of journalists in Cancun, Mexico, all set to promote disaster movie 2012.

The actress, who plays the US President’s daughter in the film, spoke at length on the joys of doing research on and delving deep into her movie characters, and valuing friendships forged on films, big and small and so on and so forth.

But prod her a smidgen, and she gets a mischievous look in her eyes.

They sparkle like the intricate rings on her fingers and bracelets on both arms – as they did when a near-misunderstanding occurred halfway through a journalist’s question about 2012, which features massive tidal waves destroying all and sundry.

“In a movie of this kind, in which the special effects are so important, do you think your character was well-drowned...”

“My character was... wot, love?” Newton barks (more like a tiny woof, really) in her clipped English accent, trying to decipher the journalist’s heavy and decidedly non-English accent.

He tries again, speaking more clearly: “Your character was well-drawn...well-written?” The 37-year-old actress – who won a Bafta for her supporting role in 2006 Oscar Best Picture winner Crash – agrees that her character is well-drawn.

But while you’d expect her to give some sort of highfalutin spiel about artistic values and the art of being arty despite the massive special effects, she is surprisingly honest about having a “stereotype” for a character in 2012.

She explains: “In a film like this, I was very aware that the characters need to be very clearly defined. There’s a formula. There’s so much action going around you, if you try any kind of subtle (acting) stuff, it’s going to be missed.”

Then, straight-shooter that she is, she fires off this: “Look, it’s a movie.

This is absolutely a popcorn crowd-pleaser. Westarted (our roles) off as stereotypes and tried to make them as real as possible.

“Someone asked, ‘Do you think this movie is going to help people become more aware of the environment?’ I was thinking, ‘Is this movie really going to encourage people turn their taps off as they’re brushing their teeth?’ It’s a spectacle. It’s massive.”

But just when you think Newton’s all about being the unfussy working actress, she trots out a bit of her princessy side – albeit the hidden emotional-turmoil variety.

She says of the action scenes where she has to be soaking wet all the time: “I’m such a little girl about such things. I didn’t complain (on set) about it.

“But inside, though, I was thinking, ‘Oh, not again, please. Oh, it’s just miserable, miserable. Inside, I’m thinking, ‘(Expletive), can we please...can this be it?’ ”

Her face lights up as she talks about her own little girls – two daughters aged 9 and 5 – when it comes to juggling family life with her career. She says that it may sound “boring”, but that “it has more to do with being a mum when it comes to what I want to do next”.

She explains: “If I’ve worked on a big film, then I don’t want to do another big film because of the kids’ school, that kind of thing.”

Hard to imagine this glamorous ex-Mission Impossible co-star with the diamond-bright face doing the real-life mummy-next-door thing.

But her older daughter has a name that’s hardly girl-next-door, having been ripped straight from the silver screen – Ripley. Yes, of the Alien variety.

FiRST asks if she is keen on being in the Alien prequel.

Newton brightens up and asks: “Is there another one? Really?”

Yes, really. There’s one to be helmed by Ridley Scott, who directed the first Alien film.

But he had hinted that his prequel would not be a straightforward telling of how the aliens from his original film came to be in deep space, and that it would take place much earlier than the original, reported Ireland On-Line website.

A dismayed Newton says: “Not with (Alien star) Sigourney Weaver? I don’t want to see it if it doesn’t have Sigourney in it.”

She pouts prettily to much laughter around the table.

“I’d rather watch it than be in it. When you’re in it, it’s not as much fun as watching it, you know.”

Maybe the lady prefers to remain the lady with the cute cardy, accessories and heels – all nice and dry, no alien slime, thank you very much. That’s even though somewhere in her, there’s a potty-mouthed, straight-talking Sigourney.

This article was first published in The New Paper.