A FILM released nationally at the weekend features the homegrown talent of a Darwen schoolgirl in a lead role.

Sophie Lee, 11, of Beaumont Way, stars in Grow Your Own, a contemporary British comedy drama about what happens when asylum seekers are given a plot of land at the local allotment.

Sophie stars as Phoenix, the daughter of mysterious Chinese immigrant Kung Sang.

Sophie's mum Angela, 44, said: "There was a premiere in Liverpool on Monday and there were people asking for her autograph and taking photographs.

"She enjoyed the film and was applauded. Philip Jackson (who plays Big John) said to me I should be very proud of her."

"I thought it was a good comedy and it was a bit sad and I could relate to it.

"I was quite surprised when she got the part. I thought the audition was going to be for television, maybe as an extra, not as one of the main characters in a film."

The film project started as a documentary about a project in Bootle, Liverpool, where The Family Refugee Support Project supplies allotments to asylum seekers as a means of therapy.

The documentary idea was dropped and the PG-rated film, starring several well-known actors including comedian Omid Djalili, Hot Fuzz star Olivia Colman and Vera Drake actor Eddie Marsan, was made.

Sophie auditioned for the part in June 2006 and a few weeks later found out she had won it.

Filming took place for six weeks throughout the 2006 school holidays.

Sophie already does catalogue work as does her four-year-old sister Siobhan and six-year-old brother Kelvin has appeared in soap Hollyoaks.

Sophie, a Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School pupil will also be starring in Oliver at Burnley Mechanics Theatre this November and recently had to turn down a role in television programme Grange Hill as it would interfere with her school work.

Her parents Angela and Paul, 44, run Lee's Cantonese Kitchen in Sudell Road.

Blacktree Road allotments is where the tension starts in Grow Your Own as chairman Big John is shocked by the arrival of a group of immigrants and implements some tough new rules which not only the newcomers object to.