One of the smaller switches she's had to make in recent times, to be sure. Only Amy knows just how transplanted her current life is. Having grown up a hardy tomboy, riding horses on her family's farm in suburban Liverpool, had someone told her that her life was about to take a turn for the glamorous, she'd have left them standing there in a cloud of her horse's dust.
As these things tend to go, Amy was approached by the head of modelling agency, Premier, and just like that, the ball was set rolling. No sooner was she signed on by the agency that the plaid-and-breeches girl transformed into a beauty queen, quickly going on to win a spate of big ticket beauty pageants.
At 15, after winning Miss Teen Liverpool and Miss Teen Great Britain, whose prizes included a modelling contract in the US on a scholarship, she shifted to America with her mum. And at 16, she bagged the big one: Miss Teen World 2008.
She then received a call from her new modelling agency, Boss, telling her a South Indian movie director had seen her pictures on Google and was flying over to meet her. "When I met Vijay, he asked if I could act or dance, and I said, 'I have no idea', laughs Amy. But the director's mind was made up, and a week later, the raven-haired beauty who'd only just turned 17, found herself in stifling Chennai, preparing for her Tamil debut, ...
Madrasapattinam was a runaway hit, and Amy's performance roundly appreciated. At the premiere, Vijay introduced her to his friend Gautam Menon, another prolific south Indian director. And a week later, Menon called to say he was directing a Bollywood film and he wanted Amy for the lead.
Once more, she said yes to fate— she'd already done a film, how different could it be? "What a shock to the system, she says, sounding a bit in shock still. "I had to change everything—learn to dance, learn Hindi, learn to be this character who I'm not at all like in real life, she adds. What about the off screen
