From the mob to madam

The last time we saw her she played a surly teenager who knew perfectly well where the money from her mob chief father's "waste management business" really came from.

Now Jamie-Lynn DiScala, who made her name playing Tony Soprano's daughter Meadow, has grown up and her latest screen character is making plenty of cash in her own right.

DiScala plays the Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, who made millions servicing the sexual appetites of some of the film industry's most famous names.

LA leading women including Nicole Kidman had been linked to the role, but 23-year-old New Yorker DiScala saw off the competition to land the part in Going Down: The Rise And Fall Of Heidi Fleiss.

DiScala, who has been acting since the age of seven, recovered from an eating disorder she developed during the early days of The Sopranos to become one of Hollywood's hottest young talents.

Directed by Charles McDougall - known in Britain for directing Hillsborough - Going Down charts the career and demise of a woman who said she knew enough to end 20 Hollywood marriages.

Following her arrest, dozens of actors feared they would be outed as her clients, but in the end only Charlie Sheen, who spent $53,000 on prostitutes supplied by Fleiss, testified against her. It is not yet known who will play Sheen in the TV film.

Born of liberal parents, Fleiss teamed up with filmmaker Ivan Nagy. He introduced her to Madame Alex, then the main procurer of prostitutes in LA, played in the film by Brenda Fricker.

Fleiss believed she could do a similar job and, recruiting girls at nightclubs, went on to become the biggest madam around - with a 40 per cent cut of the $1,500 (£850) fees. Some of her girls could make £200,000 in tips from their famous clients.

She even supplied Republican businessmen with call girls to act as dates for a George Bush Snr fundraising dinner. She said later: "I had 12 or 14 girls there, and they all got a picture of themselves with the President. I got a kick out of that."

Her downfall came after she fell out with Nagy, who tipped off the police that Fleiss's girls were using cocaine, and the madam was arrested in a sting operation at the Beverley Hilton Hotel in June 1993.

In 1997 a LA court sentenced her to three years in jail. On her release she filed for bankruptcy, published her autobiography and, with friend Victoria Sellers, a video on sex advice.