The story of how Georgina Cates broke into film reads like a footnote to Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon or a weird hybrid of Sybil and A Star Is Born. In the early '90s, Cates, then known by her birth name of Clare Woodgate, was an aspiring actress who had trained at London's Guildhall School of Drama and done some television work. One day, she learned that director Mike Newell was adapting Beryl Bainbridge's novel An Awfully Big Adventure for the screen and decided she was meant to play the role of Stella Bradshaw, the novel's young protagonist. After petitioning the film's casting director Susie Figgis for months and sending in an 8 x 10 photo and resum