Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin followed up Little Miss Sunshine with the children's adventure Nim's Island. She plays a marine biologist's daughter stranded alone with her animal friends when her father gets lost at sea. A dog, cat and turtle owner, Breslin loved her costars.
Abigail Breslin on Nim's Island
"It was really, really fun," she said. "They were all really nice and so it was fun. I had to train a bit. I had to train with the animals and I had to train for the stunts. Probably the Sea Lions [were my favorite] just because they come up to you and they give kisses and they do a lot of things. It wasn't scary. They were just really nice."
Since Nim's Island essentially turns Breslin into an action heroine, she had to brush up on her aquatic skills. "I thought that I was and then once I got there I realized I wasn't that great of a swimmer. In the water they had this black tent over it for one scene and a metal pole and these huge tires and so that got a little bit scary. The stunt people called Nim, Nimdiana Jones. So that was kind of funny."
Nim's Island
Though Nim is alone in the film, Breslin had plenty of adult supervision with costars Gerard Butler and Jodie Foster. "They were both really nice. Gerard is really funny. We were walking up the steps one day on the deserted island that we were staying on. There was one lodge and we lived in tree houses. There were a hundred and nine steps up and there were Bush Rats and geckos and tree frogs and we were walking up one night and we hear [hissing] and so we took the flashlight and we screamed. We looked up and it was just Gerard."
Since the grown-ups sometimes used grown-up language, Breslin started a swear jar. "All together with everybody we made a $150. We donated it to the RSPCA which is the ASPCA in Australia."
Any actor will choose carefully when following an Oscar nomination, but Breslin has a whole team to help her. "I mean, my mom will read the script and then she'll tell me if I can read it or not and if I can I try and see if this is somebody that I would like to know and if we both like it and they ask us if we want to do it then we say yes."
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