Gaming all-star Alix Wilton Regan talks taking on the famed action-adventurer.

Recrafting Croft: The new Tomb Raider actress explains her ‘no Laras left behind’ approach to gaming icon (exclusive)

Gaming all-star Alix Wilton Regan talks taking on the famed action-adventurer.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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June 5, 2026 10:05 a.m. ET

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Alix Wilton Regan performs as Lara Croft in new 'Tomb Raider' games. Credit:

Rich Soublet; Crystal Dynamics, Amazon Game Studios

- Alix Wilton Regan, the new *Tomb Raider* actress, opens up to * *about taking on the role of the iconic video game character.

- Regan unpacks her approach to the character, which she calls "no Laras left behind."

- The BAFTA nominee recalls her dramatic audition, which involved an abandoned Italian villa, a moped, and a race against time.

Alix Wilton Regan is very eager to show off her guns — the two toy firearms she ordered off of Amazon for her *Tomb Raider* auditions.

The actress, a megastar in the gaming space who’s now set to play Lara Croft in two new titles coming from Crystal Dynamics and Amazon Game Studios, swivels away from her Zoom screen to grab them off a shelf as the light from an uncharacteristically sunny late-April day in London pours in. “It’s almost as good as L.A.” weather, she says.

Turning back around with a pair of plastic gray toy pistols, tipped with bright orange, she says, “Here are my girls."

These were a purchase for the *Tomb Raider* callbacks, which amounted to four rounds of auditions over four months. By comparison, Regan says she had three rounds before landing the role of vengeance-seeking Aya in the Egypt-set *Assassin's Creed Origins*, and two rounds for Juliette in the World War II VR game *Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond*.

The way Regan talks about fighting to become one of the most iconic action-adventurers in entertainment history sounds like the opening of a *Tomb Raider* game — minus the ancient boobytraps.

Alix Wilton Regan filming 'Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis'.

Amazon Game Studios

Her journey began in Italy in August 2022, in an abandoned villa on the top of a mountain.

“My agent — shoutout to Julie Thompson — calls me and goes, ‘Listen, I know you’re on holiday, but I've just had this script come through. It's completely you. It's Lara Croft,’” the Londoner recalls.

Stunned by the news, the stage-trained star of *Mass Effect 3* and *Dragon Age: Inquisition* raced to record a self-tape of three scenes, including one where she pretends to jump out of an airplane and open her parachute. The hitch: There’s no internet in the villa.

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“I had to take a moped — that's absolutely true — to the bottom of the mountain, go to the tiny village that has about 100 people living in it with one bar, and I had to beg the man in broken Italian, ‘Internet. Please, internet.’”

All she had to do was order drinks. With two takes per scene and a strained wifi connection, “It took about five hours to send the tapes,” Regan says. “I just sat there drinking Aperol spritz in the early hours of the evening.”

Four months later, in February 2023, she received the good news on a group video call.

“I screamed for about 20 minutes in my car and then I promptly burst into tears," she says.

Lara Croft in 'Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis'.

Crystal Dynamics, Amazon Game Studios

Regan’s reign as the new Lara Croft will begin with a double-whammy of games next year. The first is *Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis* (Feb. 12, 2027), a reimagining of the original 1996 *Tomb Raider*, which will mark her official debut as Lara Croft. The second is *Tomb Raider: Catalyst*, a brand-new chapter in the character’s story. (A launch date hasn’t yet been announced.)

Regan admits she's thought about how she wants to define her version of a character played by a long line of actresses across games, movies, and TV shows.

“It's less about distinguishing from past iterations,” she says, “and almost melding everything together.”

Regan recites her mantra: “No Laras left behind.”

“I want my Lara to be an amalgamation of everything that's come before, retaining that confident, sexy, sassy, classic Lara-ness, whilst bringing her forward into the next chapter of her life,” she explains.

As it happens, she's already had run-ins with multiple Lara Crofts. Rhona Mitra, who served as the live-action model for the character in the Eidos Interactive era of the games, is a part of the *Squadron 42* cast with her. And Regan already knows fellow British actress Sophie Turner, who's currently starring in Amazon's live-action *Tomb Raider* TV series.

At the prospect of making an Easter egg-style cameo in that upcoming adventure-drama, Regan responds, "I would love that. You've heard it here first. That would be my dream come true. So if she wants me, I'm available."

Tomb Raider’s next era

Alix Wilton Regan on set of 'Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis'.

Amazon Game Studios

To launch a new era of *Tomb Raider*, it makes sense to go back to the beginning.

The franchise launched in 1996 with a game that took players and Croft to Peru, Greece, Egypt, and the lost island of Atlantis, dodging all manner of creatures and entrapments.

A lot has happened since. There's been sequels, remakes, remasters — Regan is currently making her way through the 2024 remaster of the flagship game — and a whole prequel saga, dubbed the Survivor Trilogy.

*Grey’s Anatomy* alum Camilla Luddington, who starred as a younger version of the character coming into her own, headlined that trilogy, consisting of 2013’s *Tomb Raider*, 2015’s *Rise of the Tomb Raider*, and 2018’s *Shadow of the Tomb Raider*.

Beyond Regan's computer screen is her personal timeline of the character's history, loaded with images of Lara Croft from all the various games.

The mission behind *Legacy of Atlantis* is “to bring the character of Lara Croft up to speed with all of the history of the Survivor trilogy, bringing Lara up to where she is in her life for this debut adventure,” Regan explains.

Lara Croft in 'Tomb Raider: Catalyst'.

Crystal Dynamics

It’s not a remake or a remaster. That much Regan stresses.

“The structure is actually completely different,” she teases. "It will take the player on a very different emotional journey throughout *Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis*, which will indulge your senses and your imagination and will then lead us nicely into *Catalyst*."

Regan secretly got to work on both *Legacy of Atlantis* and *Catalyst* simultaneously starting in April 2023. She's still been going back to the performance-capture stage and the voice-over booth to record new material.

Details on *Catalyst *remain sparse, but the story is set in Northern India in the wake of a "mythical cataclysm" that unleashes "ancient secrets" and "the mysterious forces that guard them," according to an official description. It's a game about the old colliding with the new, which feels on par with Regan's approach to Croft herself.

"I very much hope that my Lara Croft will bring together fans who have been with Lara since day one in 1996," she says. "I hope that our *Tomb Raider*s will invite them all back into the fold whilst also appealing to modern-day audiences who perhaps haven't played the games before or perhaps were, like, 10 years old in 2018 when the last game came out."

It's a tall order. "I want to straddle those two hemispheres," she continues, "pull them together with Lara's charisma and confidence and capabilities."

“Do no harm, but take no bullshit”

Alix Wilton Regan backstage at the 2026 BAFTA Awards.

Already the fandom at large feels as though Croft's legacy is in good hands with Regan. It speaks to her reputation in the biz. The actress, nominated for a British Academy Film Award for *Lies of P*, has given games some of the most complex, dynamic performances to date. As a member of the Pixel Pack, a group of video game actors launched by Neil Newbon (Astarion himself from the highly lauded *Baldur's Gate III*), she and her colleagues continue to demystify the performance that goes into these roles.

Regan recalls "the most moving story" she ever heard regarding one of her parts. It came from a woman who was paralyzed from the waist down following a car crash. While in the hospital for six weeks, she played a third-person run of *Dragon Age: Inquisition* as Regan's Inquisitor. The woman's doctors said that playing video games could help her brain relearn how the body moves by observing the movement of virtual characters.

The woman wrote to Regan upon release. "It is the letter that I have received that has flummoxed me the most where I thought, 'Video games matter on a level that we will never all fully understand,'" she says. "We take a hand and we reach out through the darkness, and if you're lucky, you meet someone else in that darkness and you allow them to leave with a pocket full of hope."

When news broke out of the Game Awards in December that Regan would be tackling *Tomb Raider*, the response was clear. They say not to read the Reddit threads, but Regan estimates seeing "three cruel comments in total, out of thousands."

Her peers in the industry had similar reactions. The morning of the announcement, she ran into Ben Starr and Jennifer English, two notable fellow gaming actors. (Starr gave a standout performance in last year's *Clair Obscur: Expedition 33*, while English took home a BAFTA and a Game Award for her role in the same title.)

Alix Wilton Regan.

They were at a Los Angeles hotel the day of the announcement, which was set to go public later that night.

"Ben, who is super fast and super sharp, looks me dead in the eye and goes, 'Are you the next Lara Croft?'" Regan recalls. "On the spot, I went, 'Uh, no. That is so flattering, Ben, that you would think that.' So, I lie to their faces the morning of because I thought, 'F---ing hell!'"

By the time of the Game Awards afterparty that evening, she was the talk of the town. Regan feels "it's all written in the stars." Her evidence? "I'll share it with you and then everyone can laugh about it," she says before pointing out how she and Croft are both Aquariuses.

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The former tomb-raiding Angelina Jolie also happens to be a Gemini, which Regan says is compatible with her own air sign. "It all goes hand in hand," she says.

And then there's the matter of Regan's own personal motto, one which she feels applies to Croft: "Do no harm, but take no bullshit."

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