She wafts into the hotel suite as if carried in on a breeze of Chanel No 5. The hair, once the tousled blonde mane of a delinquent Valley girl, is sculpted into an elegant auburn up-do, the powder-white complexion offset by a gash of deep red lipstick. She smoulders seductively in a pair of vintage leopard-print heels.

“My dress?” asks Evan Rachel Wood of the green gown that clings to her every curve like Sellotape. “Ebay.”

As if tapped with the back of a spoon, the carefully constructed 1940s-sex-siren facade is shattered.

Such an off-beat exclamation is typical of the self-possessed 21-year-old Wood as she sits opposite me on the terrace of the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills, gently sniffling, all goose bumps and bright blue eyes, in the chill November air. A girl who shot to fame at 16 with a Golden Globe-nominated breakthrough performance playing a sexually precocious, tongue-pierced, drug-taking teen in the shocker hit Thirteen, she has now landed her first “serious” role, opposite Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, in which she plays the estranged daughter of Rourke’s washed-up pro athlete. Directed by Darren Aronofsky, the film opens in January.

“I kicked Mickey’s ass and he’ll confirm this,” she giggles, adding that she sees Rourke like a “cool uncle, but he’ll hate me for saying that”. She is endearingly coy about her success. “When people stare at me, I don’t automatically think it’s because I’m famous. I look in the mirror to see if I have something stuck in my teeth.”

The fact that Wood is said to be the reason Marilyn Manson left his wife, Dita Von Teese, could also have something to do with the stares. Then there are the rumours about an alleged split from Manson, including the inevitable one that she was having W an affair with Rourke. (Rourke’s response? “Tell the faggot who wrote this shit that I want to break his f***ing legs.”) But Wood is used to controversy. The media reaction to her involvement with Manson, for example, was instant and vitriolic. “My favourite press story was a photo of me with ‘whore’ written across it,” she says. “I wanted to frame it.”

People were outraged that Wood apparently started dressing like Von Teese just after she had stolen her man; that Manson had traded in his wife for a younger model and moulded Wood into a mini Von Teese. “I was a brunette before I met Manson,” protests Wood, who also starred in an astonishingly explicit music video with Manson. She doesn’t mention Von Teese by name, but she does say: “She’s the last person I would want to be like.”

Born to actor parents, Wood started in musical theatre at the age of four. “My mom was obsessed with me being the next Jodie Foster. She wanted me to go to the schools that Foster went to and learn French,” she says. She is now a 17-year veteran of stage and screen, and not easily intimidated by working with one of the biggest names in her industry. On being pitted against the notoriously difficult Rourke in The Wrestler — which scooped the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival — she is full of grown-up thespian speak.

“Actors are competitive. If somebody throws something at you, what are you going to do? Throw it right back, of course. You have to prove yourselves to each other.” At Rourke’s insistence, they didn’t meet until arriving on set. The first words she ever said to him were in character, with the cameras rolling.

“He’ll test you. He’s not going to give his respect to just anyone.” But there is still an element of the gentle precociousness about her that comes with being just 21: beyond the dress and the shoes and the new hair, there is still a sense of her playing grown-up in her mother’s clothes. And when asked if working with Rourke — who has had notoriously botched cosmetic surgery — has put her off ever going under the knife herself, Wood tilts her head down, looks up at me with an arched eyebrow and says, with a sincere but tight smile: “You are so mean.”

Until her involvement with Manson, Wood had never really been one of those young actresses who carnivorously court press attention to raise their profile. And it is still her ability to act, rather than her ability to embark on gossip-generating sexual liaisons, that has some of Hollywood’s most respected directors queuing up to work with her. Julie Taymor cast her in the lead of the sunny, toe-tapping Beatles-inspired musical film Across the Universe, and she received the ultimate actor’s accolade when Woody Allen made her the lead of his next comedy, Whatever Works.

Still, the rumour mill powers on. She has responded calmly to stories that she has split from Manson. “Manson and I both decided to take some time apart, so we could concentrate on work,” she stated. So who might she date next? Given that, before Manson, she had a two-year relationship with Jamie Bell, the cherubic British star of Billy Elliot, the field is wide open. You certainly can’t accuse her of having a type.

There is one thing we can be sure of: he’ll be carefully chosen. Wood’s image is clearly important to her as she takes her first steps into the world of grown-up roles. Despite the chill, she never once during our interview covers her pneumatic starlet curves with her coat.

When asked how she would describe herself, she replies “crazy”, but when pushed to give an example, the best she can offer is “swimming naked at night in the ocean”. She goes on to explain that she is petrified of the sea — maybe that does constitute a crazy act? — but considering the messed-up, sexed-up characters she has played so convincingly, not to mention her most recent choice of lover, I’m surprised she cannot come up with something more left-field.

Wood just smiles demurely, as if she’s already said too much. Her face reverts to serious-actress mode. The look says “fully grown adult in charge of her own destiny”. “I don’t let people push me in any one direction,” she says of her recent choice of film roles. When asked if anyone ever dares tell her what to do, Wood pauses for a moment to think, before responding with a laugh: “My car’s navigation system — and even that I tell to shut up.” Then she steers the conversation back to the official reason for the interview: publicity for The Wrestler.

“I’ve been really lucky,” she says. “Sometimes I think, ‘Is this my life? Did that really happen?’ Like when The Wrestler won the Golden Lion. But it’s always nice to be appreciated for something you’ve worked really hard on.” Then she bursts out laughing again. “I just said ‘hard on’.”

And, once again, the carefully constructed veneer of grown-up womanhood collapses around her like a pack of cards.

The Wrestler opens on January 16

Times recommends

• What took place in 2010...
• Can you really cure a hangover?
• Video: How to do glamorous smoky eyes