Breslin Branches Out in 'Nim's Island'
Feisty Actress Has a Challenging Role
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It's easy to think that a young actress is just like the characters she plays -- especially when they are sweet and spunky and likable.
So, are those traits an accurate description of 11-year-old Abigail Breslin?
"I'm not so innocent," she says, confessing to a month in which she had 365 text messages, far exceeding her limit.
In the family-friendly movie "Nim's Island," which opens in theaters tomorrow, Abigail plays a feisty, fun-loving girl living on a hidden-away South Pacific island who -- when she can't reach her father by phone -- seeks help by e-mail.
You see, Abigail is just like the characters she plays. (We'll ignore the fact that Nim asks a fictional adventure hero to come to her aid.)
Abigail already has appeared in more than a dozen movies. They include the R-rated "Little Miss Sunshine," for which she received an Academy Award nomination for playing an unlikely beauty pageant contestant. But she says Nim is her most challenging role.
In the comedy-adventure, shot in Australia, Abigail shows a wide range of emotions. She also has a lot of action scenes: swimming (and yelling) underwater with a sea lion, fighting with a sword, climbing a mountain and riding on a zip line. ("It was fun but a little bit scary -- I'm afraid of heights," she said.)
"I had a lot of training with the animals and the stunt crew," Abigail says. "They had to teach me how not to run like a girl."
She also had to learn how to share the spotlight with some really big co-stars -- two 400-pound sea lions who shared the role of Selkie -- plus several pelicans and five bearded dragon lizards.
That was scary, she said, but not like you might think:
"One day on set I was doing a scene" with a sea lion and a lizard, she said, "and the sea lion, Friday, stepped up on the bench and put his head on top of the lizard. I thought he was going to eat him."
Not to worry. In fact, the movie ended up with more bearded dragons than at the start.
A lizard named Goblet laid about a dozen eggs during filming. The first to hatch was named Nim. The second one was called Abigail.
-- Scott Moore
