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 honoured with a star on the Walk of Game, and was awarded a Guinness World Record recognising her as the "most successful human video game heroine." In 2008, she was named second on GameFly's List of Hottest Chicks Ever. In late 2008, MSN held a poll of who was the most Iconic video game character, in which Lara came 3rd but actually drew with Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog.

Lara is generally presented as a beautiful, intelligent, athletic, and somewhat reckless British woman 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.

Development

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, this idea to make the character a female was also kept as it was felt solving puzzles and exploration was more suited to a female character rather than a traditional male action hero. The redesigned character was initially a South American woman named Laura Cruz. She eventually evolved into an English woman named Lara Croft. Her surname was picked from a phone book for sounding "UK friendly", while the name "Lara" was chosen to appeal to American audiences. Also known as Ten Years of Tomb Raider: A GameTap Retrospective Toby Gard has stated that he created Lara to counter stereotypical female game characters, saying he felt they were mostly "bimbos" or "dominatrix" types at that time. Lara was originally going to be very militaristic and cold-blooded. In 2006, it was announced that Lara's large breast size and curves would be slightly reduced after Gard and fans felt that her appearance was being used too much to advertise the series and felt it was detrimental to the character's "tough as nails" persona.

Personality

Lara is consistently depicted as a highly confident, independent, and headstrong person. She is also very brave, rarely showing any sign of fear in very dangerous or lethal situations. In Legend, she is also shown to have a love for dizzying heights and dangerous ancient traps, much to the dismay of Zip and Alister. In Anniversary (a remake of the first game), what is implied to be her first human kill is portrayed, and she is visibly disturbed by the incident throughout the rest of the game. In Tomb Raider: Legend, human beings are the most common enemies Lara encounters, and it is necessary to fight many of them to progress. Lara's current voice actor described the character as "strong and powerful" but as having an "edge" to her.