- Lara Croft's new actress, Alix Wilton Regan, says the first Tomb Raider movie starring Angelina Jolie is her "favorite"
- She reveals that "a lot of those scenes" from the movie were used for her Legacy of Atlantis auditions
- The actress says Crystal Dynamics wanted to capture Angelina Jolie's "charisma, confidence, and sassiness"
The actress behind Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis's new Lara Croft, Alix Wilton Regan, has revealed that her auditions were based on scenes from the first Tomb Raider movie.
In an interview TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026, Wilton Regan, who discussed the process of bringing the character to life for the new "reimagining" of the 1996 game, shared that her "favorite" movie in the franchise is the original 2001 Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie.
Besides loving Jolie's portrayal of the iconic video game character, the actress also said developer Crystal Dynamics "used a lot of those scenes" for her auditions.
"They used a lot of those scenes for my callbacks when I was auditioning, because Angelina Jolie encapsulates Lara's charisma, confidence, sassiness, and that was something that the creators at Crystal Dynamics really wanted to capture as we move forward into a new era of Tomb Raider," Wilton Regan said.
When asked if players will be able to recognize some of Jolie's vibe from her performance, the actress joked, "I mean, I would never compare myself to Angelina Jolie, but I would love for someone else to compare me to Angeline Jolie."
She went on to outline the audition process, which began in a hot, mountain villa in Italy (very Lara Croft) where she shot three scenes, with two takes each. Afterward, she took a moped down the mountain to a tiny cafe and begged for the Wi-Fi password, then sat for "literally, not figuratively, five hours" getting steadily drunk on Aperol spritz. "Which I love, by the way," she added.
"So it was no chore as I watched these six auditions upload and get sent back to LA to my agents there, and all those were auditions from the game, but they were dummy scenes," Wilton Regan continued.
"Dummy scenes are when they're fake scenes with fake character names, the essence of what the creative team are looking for, and then the next few rounds were a combination of some of the scenes from the Angelina Jolie movies, and also a combination of actual scenes from the video game, where I could see that it said Lara Croft. However, all of the other characters in the scene still had dummy names, so I couldn't work out who Lara was actually talking to."
When she eventually received the news that she got the role, Wilton Regan said she "screamed and burst into tears."
"It was remarkably undignified, but it was very true to what I was feeling emotionally in the moment," she said.
Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis will launch on February 27, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
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