Zuleikha Robinson: Not Horsing Around

Most young starlets getting their big break are ecstatic. Not Zuleikha Robinson. When the 26-year-old actress landed the leading-lady role in this month's Hidalgo, she was--in a word--terrified. And it's not because she'd be wooing hunky Viggo Mortensen, who plays a Pony Express courier competing in a brutal horse race across the Arabian desert. No, it was the equine costars that had her up at night.

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"I rode when I was younger. But I fell off one time, and the horse trampled over my head. They say you're supposed to get right back on the horse--well, I didn't, and I've had this huge fear of riding ever since." Ever the trooper--and, okay, perhaps not wanting to blow her big shot--she saddled up. "I ended up really enjoying it," she says now. "And I'm definitely a better rider."

Clearly, Robinson (her exotic first name means "beautiful one" in Persian) knows how to give second chances. Like the one she afforded a whole country for her current project.

Four years ago, she says, she visited Italy (Florence, in particular) and found it "miserably cold with too many tourists." But then came the chance to film an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in, well, Venice. The carrot to overcoming that tourist hang-up: sharing the set with Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes and Al Pacino, who plays Shylock. Needless to say, she was on the next plane out. "This trip has been absolutely amazing," she admits. "When I came down the Grand Canal, I was so overwhelmed by the beauty of the buildings, I almost started crying."

And how did it work out with Pacino? "Unfortunately, I've only had one scene with Al, so I didn't have that much time to really watch his process. But he's such a presence, and he's got so much intensity. I think this is going to be wonderful for him. Not that he really needs anything to be who he is."

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Melissa Quinlan & Daniel Davis