Kelley's mother is from Peru and her father is Argentinean, but when she speaks her accent is 100 per cent Australian.

The 21-year-old Sydneysider is also not struggling for work in Los Angeles after scoring her first starring role in one of this year's big action films, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

In February 2005 her agent told her Warner Bros and the producers of hit TV shows Charmed and Seventh Heaven were searching worldwide for a female actress to star in a new TV series about mermaids.

They were looking for an exotic, multi-racial actress. "They had searched the US, Canada, London and the last place they went to was Australia," Kelley, who at the time was more concerned about her studies than the audition, said.

"I literally went and read between lectures.

"They called me and asked me to come back.

"I was like 'Absolutely not. I have a lecture about sustainable development in the third world which I'm not missing'."

Kelley refused to go for the second audition.

"I said 'If they like me, they like me'," Kelley laughed.

The studio and producers obviously liked her ballsy attitude and handed her a plane ticket to Los Angeles for a final casting.

"I was on a plane the next Sunday and I was at the Warner Bros lot in LA on the Monday," she said.

"It all happened that quick.

"On the Monday I was sitting in my hotel and got the call 'You got it. You're going to Miami to shoot the show'."

A pilot for the new series was shot, but as what regularly happens, the studio opted not to go ahead with the series, although it was not all bad news for Kelley.

The buzz she generated with the starring role had LA talent agents and managers queuing up to represent her, an opportunity many young hopeful actors in Hollywood only dream about.

"I had a day where I got to pick the ones to represent me," she recalled.

"I went back to Australia and my agent and manager were looking out for me.

"They said 'You should come back and try out for movies'.

"That's what I did and I landed Fast and Furious in September." It was a tough decision for Kelley to leave her home in Sydney because she had built relationships with girls at The Block and others serving sentences at juvenile detention centres.

"I left everything behind," Kelley said.

"I had to defer my uni, left my girls behind. It was the hardest thing ever."

The role, she hopes, will inspire the kids back in Sydney to keep out of trouble and pursue their dreams.

In Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, the third in the series of films, Kelley plays the feisty girlfriend of a Japanese mafia member. The film is set in Tokyo and focuses on the underground motor sport of drift racing. Kelley spent a month in Tokyo, as well as three months in LA shooting the film.

Her character, Neela, is part Australian.

"I'm an outsider who has grown up in Japan, but has fallen into this world of drift racing," Kelley, who now lives in LA, said.

"Drift racing is totally different to any other racing. "It's not really about speed. It's about skill and precision."

Kelley's co-stars are teenage American rap star, Li'l Bow Wow, and Alabama-born actor, Lucas Black, best known for his roles in the Academy Award-winning Sling Blade and recent performances in Cold Mountain and Jarhead.

Her "girls" at the detention centres in Sydney were impressed.

"They were like 'Did you kiss Bow Wow in the movie?'," Kelley said.

"I was like 'No, but I had to kiss Lucas'."