Casting Emma Roberts: A Shrewd Choice

Asked whom she admires in the industry, Emma cites Drew Barrymore -- who also grew up in a family of actors -- and Reese Witherspoon.

"They have really great careers," Emma says."And I don't see them in the tabloids doing crazy things these days. I know Drew had her moments when she was younger. But now they both seem like very nice people.

"You want to keep your private life as private as possible," she adds. "You don't have control over what people write or say about you . . . but you don't need to go out parading yourself, I don't think."

Cunningham, speaking on the phone from the family home in the Los Angeles area, is pretty open about her relationship with her daughter. An only child of a single mom for the first 10 years of her life, Emma, Cunningham says, was "glued to my hip."

"Emma is sassy and she has an attitude, but it's not a bad attitude," she says. "It's a strong, smart attitude. That's what I love about her. But sometimes, when they get older, they don't want to listen."

She sighs.

"Grace -- she's 6 -- she's still the way Emma was. She listens, sweet as pie. She's so great. Emma was that way. But now the separation, which everyone says happens when they get to a certain age, is starting. I think it's harder on me than her."

As a little girl, Emma loved to perform in shows and dances and be the center of attention. At 9, she started begging her mother to go on auditions. Cunningham eventually caved -- thinking, she says, that her daughter wouldn't get the part but would be appeased -- and Emma was cast the very first time out, in a small role in the Johnny Depp film "Blow." By 12, she was meeting with executives at Nickelodeon, who cast her in "Unfabulous" as Addie Singer, an awkward seventh-grader who writes songs about the trials of junior high. (Emma just wrapped her third and final season, which will air in the fall.) Cunningham became a semi-reluctant stage mom, accompanying her daughter to the set for every day of filming.

"She's always supervised," Cunningham says. "She never goes to the set by herself. She's not at home by herself. What's going on with these other girls, I feel very sad about it. But I think those kinds of situations are a concern for any parent, whether you're in the business or not. There are consequences for your behavior and that's what I try to tell Emma.

"She has this career now, and she has a lot to lose. Hopefully, she'll make the right choices."

"Nancy Drew" is the first film Emma has to carry -- she was in every scene, and it was a challenge for her to play a character so temperamentally different from herself. While Emma shares Nancy's natural curiosity and personal drive, Nancy is a very serious young woman. She is always focused, always thinking, always determinedly trying to help the next person by solving the next mystery. There is something distinctly old-fashioned about her, despite her girls-can-do-anything attitude.

Nancy would never talk back to an adult. (Unless, that is, he was one of the "shady characters" she was trying to catch.)

Emma is "freewheeling, she likes to laugh, and she's disarming," says Andrew Fleming, the "Nancy Drew" director. Nancy, he adds, "is not like anybody you or I know. So [Emma] had to go up in that space and inhabit it, and she did it. . . . She's using her own self to be something very unlike herself, which is really the hard part."

As a reward for all her work on the movie, Emma asked her mom for a $2,500 Chanel purse.

Mom, not surprisingly, said no.