Great Performances

J. SHELDON/FOCUS FEATURES
Naomi Watts in a scene from 21 Grams

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Miller, 31, says that to play a younger Anthony Hopkins, "I rented all his videos so I could steal pieces of his performances and layer them into mine." His own is quietly virtuosic, revealing the character's intelligence, ambition, brutality and solitude.

"This project spoiled me in the best way," he says. And Miller honored it. In a sterling cast, he held his own as a young man learning to live a lie.

R.C. Reported by D.P.

Emma and Sarah Bolger -- In America
Child actor: that's an oxymoron. To know one's lines, to sell the sass of a sitcom gag, to know how to counterfeit tears, take after take, is to have put away childish things for the art of lying, grownup style.

So the Bolger sisters Sarah, now 12, and Emma, 8 have scored a double triumph in In America , Jim Sheridan's semiautobiographical drama of an Irish family's struggles in 1980s Manhattan. Are the girls adorable? Adoptable? You bet. Just as important, they bring two strong, wise children to beguiling life, and they do so without pushing the pathos or flirting with the camera. Sarah with her watchful poise and her precocious awareness of a family's wobbly emotional vectors, and Emma with her blithe energy, make the movie's Christy and Ariel seem like real girls. Which may be the subtlest kind of child acting.

The Dublin sibs were just 10 and 6 when they made In America . Emma, who was cast first (in her first movie), served as a tireless promoter for her older sister, who had been in a few other films. As Sarah recalls it, "Emma she's a little devil tugged on Jim's jacket and said, 'Great, I have a sister in the car.' Emma got me, and Jim asked, 'What age are you?' I said, 'Ten.' He muttered, 'Too young.' And Emma asked, 'Jim, can she just read the part?'" Christy was to have been 14, but Sheridan reconceived the role to fit Sarah.

At times, Sarah had to play stern mother to the director. On the second day of shooting, something went wrong, and Sheridan let loose a four-letter tirade. As Sarah recalls, "I turned around and said, 'Listen, Jim, can I see you in the corner for a sec?' I told him, 'It's O.K. to curse in front of me, I'm 10. But my sister's only 6, and that's rude, to curse in front of her.' After that, he toned it down a lot."

Emma, the one whose quick charm conquers you immediately, says acting "wasn't easy, and it wasn't hard either. It was a job. You went in, got it over with." But she plans to try it again "when I'm a bit older 10 or 11." Sarah, the one whose sweet gravity finally steals your heart, says she can't wait to do another film. "Give me anything."

How about a little fame? In a Dublin restaurant recently, she and Emma were asked for their autographs. Sarah even created a new signature. "It used to be in bold letters. Now it's a light scribble."

The Bolger girls are already lovely young actors. Now they're teaching themselves how to be celebrities.

R.C. Reported by Amy Lennard Goehner/New York

Sean Astin -- The Return of the King
Getting the one ring back to Mount Doom was a piece of Elven cake next to the task of making a nine-hour movie from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. If director Peter Jackson was the general, the actors were the foot soldiers. And for Sean Astin, who plays Samwise Gamgee, that meant fake feet donning the furry Hobbit appendages at 4 a.m. for a chaotic day of shooting. "The volcano where we filmed, in the middle of New Zealand, was shale," Astin recalls. "So our prosthetic feet were constantly getting gouged and gored."

Physical pain was the least of it. "On a typical day," Astin says, "we'd rehearse a scene with Peter on one sound stage, then ride to another part of town and rehearse a shot with a second-unit director, then finish makeup, go back and shoot a piece of the first scene we rehearsed. Then in the cutting rooms they'd realize they didn't have some shot, so we'd go back and do stuff from a year earlier. You had to be totally nimble, willing and trusting. You did what the acting gurus profess: to exist in the moment, and try to be sure you're emotionally resonating with whatever the drama is."

Amid all this frenzy, Astin, 32 the son of Patty Duke and John Astin, and a professional actor since he was 10 managed to make Sam as coherent as he is endearing. In the first two films Sam was Frodo's devoted servant and comrade. But in The Return of the King , he is the true hero, the one creature who will not be corrupted by the Ring's power and who literally shoulders the burden of war by toting his master up the mountain.

Sam's fiercest moment comes when he leans over his friend, ailing and bearing the deadly Ring, and declares, "Come on, Mr. Frodo. I can't carry it for you. But I can carry you." The scene has evoked tears from strong men and yanked Astin into the awards limelight. Yet as much as he reveres Jackson, Astin believes the wrong take is in the film."I know the way I delivered the line was so much more powerful than what the audience sees. That was one of the great acting achievements of my life, and I feel only 20% is on the screen."