The real life of... Lara Croft
Our sensational monthly look at a PlayStation icon

JUST AS JAMIE Lee Curtis didn’t begin life as a man, Lara Croft did. The original Tomb Raider, let’s call him Larry Craft, was a bloke. But one of his dads, Toby Gard, decided that he ought to become a she, lest George Lucas felt his Indiana Jones copyright was being infringed. So Larry Craft briefly became Laura Cruz before becoming Lara Croft, and a legend was born. Born to three dads, no less.

Yes, Lara has something in common with Mary from Three Men And A Baby. If she ever meets Nicole from Eighties sitcom My Two Dads, she’ll be all like, “Two dads? Is that all? All the cool girls have at least three. Loser!”

We’re not sure if Lara has one dad with a bushy ’tache, one with a curly toupee and one who was in four Police Academy films, but we do know that Toby Gard is one of her dads and the other two are Lord Henshingly Croft and Richard Croft. Her mother was Amelia Croft. She’s missing, presumed dead. Also presumed a bit of a slag.

In spite of all this, Lara grew up to be a well-balanced young woman. And, despite emerging from puberty with underdeveloped legs and overdeveloped breasts, lips and eyes, her physical balance was quite remarkable. While similarly top-heavy teenage girls usually suffer all kinds of jip at the hands of their 32F monster mammaries – bad posture, back pain, falling over – Lara turned out to be a natural gymnast. She didn’t need a sports bra, preferring one of those stiff, push-up jobs, and thrusting her chest baggage up and out like a dead heat in a zeppelin race.

Anyway, Lara soon realised that her incredible jumping, climbing and balancing skills were going to waste while she sat on her arse living off her father’s fortune. It seemed that Lara was destined for a career in jumping, crawling and climbing on things with the gaze of young men fixed firmly on her short-clad behind. Sure enough, in 1996 Lara would star in her first videogame – Tomb Raider.

Tomb Raider was an instant success, selling millions on the PlayStation and PC, and several on the Saturn and Mac. Almost overnight Lara became one of gaming’s biggest stars. Several more games were to come, as well as two movies and numerous advertising, sponsorship and promotional deals. Even after tarnishing her rep with Angel Of Darkness, Lara bounced back, proving she still has what it takes to pull in the punters with the very respectable Tomb Raider: Legend. This year, Lara is set to embark on her… umpteenth adventure in Tomb Raider Underworld. In the meantime we’ll be failing to see the irony of going on and on about how there’s more to Lara than her breasts and that people should stop going on and on about them all the time.

“We were friends, like, but she so needs to get over herself, like” – Amanda Evert