Can fashion launch an actress to the A-list? Meta Goldings red-carpet strategy.

LOS ANGELES — The red carpet at the Rome Film Festival premiere of "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" was massive even by blockbuster standards: cameras in the thousands, metal barricades nearly crashing to the ground under the weight of the roaring fans. They cheered loudest that November 2013 night for Jennifer Lawrence, posing in a pale-yellow, strapless Dior gown — a choice advertising her well-documented relationship with the French haute couture house. But there was a lesser-known co-star drawing eyes, too:

Meta Golding.

She doesn’t have storied design houses jockeying to dress her. She doesn’t have a stylist, and her “Hunger Games” contract didn’t include a clothing budget. But Golding was determined to make the most of the moment — in a borrowed dress by a designer you’ve never heard of.

Red carpets — at premieres, boutique openings or parties — have become a crucial career-building opportunity. On Sunday, stars will promenade and pose at the Academy Awards, where the who-are-you-wearing arrival ritual stretches on as long as the trophy show itself. Fashion has become a valuable tool in the actor's trade. It can build a brand that defines a star outside of a single role, embed her in the broader popular culture far beyond the audience for her work.

Like many in Hollywood, Golding is trying to build a fashion image. She traveled to Paris in hopes of seeding a relationship with a design house — someone willing to wardrobe her for red carpets and build her fashion credibility in the social-media conversation.

"For the Golden Globes, I thought Kate Hudson looked amazing," Golding says. "I don't think the general public could name the last film she's been in, but ... how amazing she looked will get her a call about a film. When Lupita [Nyong'o] wore that [Ralph Lauren] red dress, it was helpful."

But at her current tier in the Hollywood hierarchy, “It’s not like couture designers are saying, ‘Wear my dress!’ You have to prove yourself.”

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Search the Internet for “Meta Golding,” and you’ll see the many fashion pressures — and opportunities — for a rising actress.

There’s Golding at a critics’ gala. Golding at Comic-Con. Golding at the many “Catching Fire” premieres and the premieres of other people’s movies. Places where she would inevitably be photographed, the images filtering out into magazine spreads, celebrity blogs, fashion forums, tweeted and e-mailed. Photos that could get people to notice her.

Golding was born in India to a Haitian mother and an American father who spent his career working on hunger relief for the United Nations and other agencies. He died in 2010, and her mother now calls Silver Spring, Md., home. But Golding grew up mostly in Italy, focused through childhood on figure skating. Her lack of citizenship blocked her path to the Italian national team. So when an injury forced her off the ice, she detoured to Cornell University to major in theater and political science — a useful combination for negotiating the fraught diplomacy of Hollywood.

By the time she graduated, she had an agent. She secured roles on the soap opera “Loving,” in assorted crime procedural dramas, on the short-lived CW series “The Tomorrow People.” And then she caught the eye of casting directors for the “Hunger Games” juggernaut. In “Catching Fire,” the second film of the franchise, Golding threw knives and bared her fangs as the fearsome games champion Enobaria, a role she’ll reprise in “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2” this fall.

Which is all to say that even if you haven't heard of her, she is that rara avis of Hollywood: a working actor.

She is a classic beauty, but with enough personality in her face to hold attention. In her early 40s, she does not look plastic, Botox-shiny or spray-tan orange. She looks very, very good. Her shoulder-length dark hair frames a delicate face with angular features. She is sample-size thin. But she is not short and would stand eye-to-eye with many leading men.

She is black: not dark-skinned, not fair, but brown. She comes with an asterisk. “The challenge is a constant conversation I have on a daily basis. In any other field, if they said, ‘We’re not going ethnic,’ they’d be sued.”

Television is more welcoming, she says. Film, she says, is harder. Every advantage helps. Fashion helps.

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Hoping to build a red carpet persona, Golding and her manager, Charlton Blackburne, went to Paris in advance of the “Hunger Games” premiere. They went without a plan but with a purpose: to meet designers and perhaps forge a few mutually beneficial relationships. Though “Hunger Games” was a $100 million film, the studio did not fund her trip. She found an affordable boutique hotel. Blackburne made cold calls.

The big design houses such as Chanel or Dior didn’t invite her to their shows. But she was welcomed by less-familiar names such as Manish Arora, Anne Valerie Hash and Martin Grant — the Australian-born designer who has been working in Paris for more than a decade. He met with her personally.

Grant agreed to provide cocktail dresses for media events and other public affairs. "She seems so young; the little dresses sort of suit her." So at a Piaget boutique opening in Beverly Hills, Golding turned up in a blush-colored sheath by Grant and looked lovely.

The designer she has worn most often on the red carpet, however, is Juan Vidal, a 33-year-old womenswear designer based in Spain who is virtually unknown in the United States.

In June 2013, Blackburne happened to be sitting in a Madrid cafe and noticed a woman wearing a skirt with an oversized diamond print. He asked about its designer, then called Vidal out of the blue. Sure, said the designer, come on over.

Vidal was charmed by Golding. He loaned her a short abstract print dress to wear to an L.A. premiere last year. And when the crowd in Rome surged toward the “Hunger Games” red carpet, Golding was dressed in his slim-fitting white floral dress with a thigh-high slit.

It was Vidal’s red carpet debut. “It was a bit scandalous in Spain. It makes a lot of noise with the social media, Twitter, Instagram. It was like I move three steps [forward] in my career,” he says. “I’m a lucky boy.”

Vidal is only now beginning to sell outside of Spain, first in Paris and Milan. He'll bring the collection to New York this month. "I want the woman to have presence. I don't want to lose the classy and elegant, but you have to be a little bit crazy or ..." He pauses, searching a dictionary for the precise English word. "Unnoticed. Sometimes elegant is unnoticed, but with a touch of extravagance, magic happens."

Magic: Like a cosmetic endorsement deal, or a great script. Golding hasn’t had any of that happen yet. “I can’t say it’s translated economically,” Golding says. “But on social media, it gives the impression that you’re participating in popular culture.”

Golding looks at red carpet photographs just like everyone else. After this year’s Globes, she marveled at how Jennifer Lopez “always looks like a goddess,” Catherine Zeta-Jones “like a movie star.” On Kerry Washington: “I think her fashion choices have certainly helped her career.”

Golding is still figuring out her style. “I like to be sexy, but I love fashion and I want to be cutting edge,” she says. “I like to think I can play the field, but maybe style-wise, I’m being naive.”

Golding does not have a red carpet arrival strategy. The big concern is getting stuck in traffic and missing the red carpet. So there have been occasions when she arrived extra early. She waited in the car.

She does not yet have a preferred pose. When she started, she did not even know how to stand. A stylist offered free advice: Cross your feet when your photo’s snapped.

No, a fleet of tailors does not arrive with her borrowed dress to make sure it fits just so. She recently paid $900 to have two loaner dresses nipped and tucked — and at the end, “I don’t even really have a dress.”

The red carpet is a business — both Golding and the dress are products being merchandised — but she still has a red carpet dream. She’d love to wear Valentino someday. “That would be the epitome for me,” she said. Perhaps even a career-changing, red carpet moment.

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