Kristanna's love life

As she sashayed down the red carpet at the UK T3 Premiere in London, the fans who had waited 12 hours to catch a glimpse of Kristanna Loken's stunning figure went wild.

With her long, blonde hair worn loose and a baby pink dress draped over her elegant frame, the Terminator 3 star stole the show at the 170 million dollar film's London premiere.

The glittering evening marked her status as Hollywood's hottest new pin-up.

But despite having her pick of the Tinseltown A-list, the girl they call Skyscraper Legs only has eyes for one man - her childhood sweetheart Derek Grout. She says: "He's everything to me. We're having so much fun."

After a series of failed relationships, the 23-year-old American actress has finally found love with her childhood neighbour and oldest friend.

Derek, 30, was the boy-next-door when she was growing up in upstate New York. But the road to romance has not been easy.

Kristanna never told him about her crush and lost touch with him after moving to Los Angeles to pursue a modelling career when she was just 16. Derek, now a web designer in Boston married someone else.

So while Kristanna entertained a string of boyfriends - "there was nothing serious," she says - she phoned home one day to be told by her parents that Derek had met someone else.

It wasn't until last Christmas - after he had divorced wife Miriam - that they got together. "He lived on the neighbouring farm and I've had a crush on him since I was four," she explains.

"My mom has tapes of me singing songs about him, planning my whole life with him. We were going to get married at the zoo, what my dress was going to look like."

After spending their teenage years apart, they finally met again during a dramatic reunion last Christmas.

BY then, Derek had split from his wife - and couldn't hide his feelings for Kristanna.

She says: "I took a call from him and said 'Come on over. Will you be with Miriam?' He said: 'Oh Miriam and I are getting a divorce'. I remember smiling to myself on the phone as I said 'I am sorry to hear that'.

"So he comes over, a bottle in his hand and with a look of wanting to talk about something. I thought he was going to tell me he was gay.

"But far from it. There was a blizzard outside and we went and sat on a snow bank, ate popcorn and drank rum and no he definitely is not gay and he's been proving it ever since."

Now the pair, who share a love of hiking and the outdoors, are making the most of their time together.

"It's difficult to hold a relationship, but if it is meant to be we'll survive," she explains. "We have a lot of fun and adventures. We've done Ireland, Hawaii and Africa." And as Kristanna jets round the world promoting the film, Derek has been with her every step of the way.

In the movie, Kristanna plays T-X, an evil robot who spends most of the movie bashing the living daylights out of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It's hardly conventional leading lady stuff but Kristanna loved every minute. "It was satisfying beating Arnie up," she laughs. "But I was a bit unsure about being stronger than one of the toughest guys in movie history."

Kristanna, who was bullied at school for being tall - she is 5ft 11in - showed just how tough she could be by putting herself through a punishing training regime.

A strict diet, daily workouts and supplements devised by Arnie himself helped to transform the beauty into her character of a muscle-bound robot.

As an added incentive to get in shape, Kristanna, who was four when the first Terminator film appeared, was told she had to appear in the nude.

"I arrive naked from the future and I was paranoid about that scene. They closed off Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills for the scene but people still got a glimpse of me," she says. But I have to admit that it was the most exhilarating moment of my career.

"I was called names like Amazonian truck driver and Mrs Bigfoot at school. But I have always loved the image of Sigourney Weaver in the Alien movies and tried to keep that strong sort of female in mind.

"Arnold said we were like two bulldozers going at it. I was bruised all over. I kept thinking 'This is the biggest budget in film history at stake - do not mess up. Can you imagine if I'd hit Arnold in the face and done some real damage?

"I had a nutritionist and I put on 15 pounds of muscle. I did weapons and weights training too. I took up an Israeli form of martial arts called Krav Maga and studied with a mime coach.

I EVEN set up my own gym in my trailer. Any time I wasn't on set I was back in the trailer training.

"I would have blood taken from my finger and put into a machine and it would print out my triglycerides, my metabolism and cholesterol readings.

"My trainer would know everything, even if I had a glass of wine the night before. There was absolutely no sugar or dairy in my diet and I drank protein shakes Arnold pioneered himself.

"There was a lot of fish, high-protein, low-complex carbs and lots of veggies." Kristanna's body was so used to the regime, she found it hard to go back to her old eating habits after filming finished.

"When I ate a hard-boiled sweet for the first time it took the skin off the roof of my mouth," she explains.

"Trying to have a raisin, the sweetness of a simple raisin made me cringe. A crisp, the hardness of a simple crisp, I couldn't even bite down.

"The first thing I did after filming was to have some pasta. I hadn't had any carbs in about a month-and-a-half because I was fine-tuning my body for the opening scene.

"It was pretty intense. By the end of it, with all the supplements and everything I was more like a machine. I'm not a bodybuilder or an athlete.

Kristanna's upbringing is about as far removed from the Terminator as you can get - she grew up on Love Apple Farm near Woodstock with her Norwegian parents and older sister, Tanya. As a result, she is more hippy than hi-tech, spending her free time horse riding or hiking with dog, Buster.

"I'm probably one of the few in my generation who doesn't know how to turn a computer on," she says. "I can press the buttons on the phone and that is about it."

"Growing up on a farm, I have very strong connections to earth. So it was fairly ironic that I am playing this part. But I'm not complaining - I'm enjoying every minute.

"After this I don't know what to expect. I just hope I've got a big future."

It certainly looks like it.

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