HOMER, EROTIC In Troy, this month's mega-budget adaptation of The Iliad, ingenue Rose Byrne has perhaps the most enviable role in the film-as Brad Pitt's sex slave. "Isn't the term 'Brad Pitt's sex slave' kind of an oxymoron?" asks the 24-year-old Australian, who fondly refers to her character, Briseis, as "a whore." In fact, Briseis is an abducted princess offered to Greek warrior Achilles (Pitt), but she's no strumpet. "She doesn't come out in leather chaps or anything," says Byrne. "She wears just one dress, a high-waisted, floaty thing-very comfortable, actually."

GREECE IS THE WORD Standing in for the ancient world in Wolfgang Petersen's $150 million epic are Baja, Mexico, and the island of Malta, where Byrne was treated like royalty-except during shooting breaks, when she became just another commoner in a nearby hotel. "When we did Hector's funeral, there were 1,500 extras in costumes, with horses, around a huge funeral pyre," says Byrne. "I felt like Cleopatra. Then at the hotel, you'd watch MTV or look at people sunbathing. It was sort of like Groundhog Day."

TROJAN HORSEPLAY As one of only three female stars in a cast that includes The Lord of the Rings' Orlando Bloom and The Hulk's Eric Bana, Byrne couldn't keep away from the warfare taking place on- and off-camera: "Garrett [Hedlund, who plays Achilles' kinsman Patroclus] put bacon in air conditioners," says Byrne. "People would come back to their hotel rooms and find all the furniture was gone." The levity was a much-appreciated distraction from the grim set, where Byrne was typically preparing "for a scene where I'm watching someone get killed, or running from a burning city," she says. "All the stakes were life or death-or just death, really. There's not much comedy in the Greeks."