Soap hunks are too pretty for me; INTERVIEW: Isla Fisher.

She’s been an anorexic, a would-be lesbian, an incest victim, and dabbled in seducing married men. And she’s supposed to be just 16.

“I feel sorry for me, too,” laughs pretty Isla Fisher, who plays Shannon in Home And Away.

“But it beats simply turning up at the Summer Bay diner day after day and ordering yet another bloody milkshake.”

Off set, Scots-born Isla – she emigrated to Australia with her family when she was six – has better things to do with her time. Like writing novels.

Her first, Seduced By Fame, has just been published.

It’s a story of glamour and glitz, romance and heartbreak in a fictional TV soap.

But it’s not, Isla insists, based on anything to do with Home And Away.

The soap bulges with hunky, bronzed pin-ups. But Isla says she wouldn’t want to have a real-life romance with any of them – especially Nick Freedman, who plays Alex, her current screen beau.

Rumour has it that their off-screen relationship is more Arctic Circle than Antipodes, but the 20-year-old actress refuses to comment.

All she’ll say is that male soap stars are often too full of themselves for her liking.

“Put it this way, when I wake up in the morning I want to be the beautiful one,” she says.

In showbusiness, she reckons, finding the right man is difficult. “It’s hard to meet anyone who has done as much or even earns as much as I do.”

What she’d really like is the opportunity to meet more British guys.

“They’re different from Australians. There’s not the same ‘knock ‘em over the head and drag ‘em back to the cave’ mentality.”

Not that Isla’s busy life offers much chance of romance. On Home And Away she works five days a week, 15 hours a day. Back home – she moved into her own place at 16 when she landed a part in a kids’ mini-series – she is writing.

Her second novel, Bewitched, is due out in September.

“I have another year left on my contract, then I plan to take some time off and just sleep,” she says.

Few would deny she’ll have earned it.