Lara Croft

About Lara Croft

Lara Croft is a fictional character and the protagonist of Eidos Interactive's Tomb Raider video game series. Designed by Toby Gard, she has also been featured in movies (in which she was portrayed by Angelina Jolie), comic books, novels, and a series of animated short films. In 2006, Lara was honored with a star on the Walk of Game, and was awarded a Guinness World Record recognizing her as the "most successful human video game heroine."

Lara is generally presented as an intelligent, athletic, and somewhat reckless Englishwoman of noble birth who travels the world in pursuit of priceless artefacts. Known as both an archaeologist and an adventurer, she frequently ventures into ancient, and often very hazardous, tombs and ruins. In addition to traps and puzzles, Lara encounters a variety of enemies including rivals, gangsters, dangerous animals (including dinosaurs), legendary creatures, and supernatural beings. The fantastic nature of her archaeology related adventures have drawn comparisons to Indiana Jones.

Initially, designer Toby Gard focused on creating the settings for Tomb Raider and the main character was essentially an Indiana Jones clone. When this character was deemed unacceptable, Gard placed his attention on designing a new one. One factor that influenced Gard to use a female character was that he noticed his male co-workers often preferred using female characters in Virtua Fighter. The redesigned character was initially a South American woman named Laura Cruz. She eventually evolved into an English woman named Lara Croft. Her name was picked from a phone book for sounding "UK friendly."