TORONTO - After director Scott Hicks made "Hearts in Atlantis," which needed an 11-year-old boy to star opposite Anthony Hopkins, he vowed never again.
Hicks had found a "brilliant child who now has a wonderful career" in Anton Yelchin, flourishing with roles in movies such as "Star Trek," "Terminator Salvation" and "Alpha Dog," but he didn't relish the prospect of ever searching for another child actor.
Then the Oscar-nominated director of "Shine" faced a more Herculean challenge: finding a 6-year-old to play Clive Owen's younger of two sons in "The Boys Are Back." If, as he acknowledges, any scene is only as good as the worst performance in it, much of the movie was riding on the choice.
"Hundreds of boys were screened and you're just hoping and hoping that someone's going to pop out. What I was looking for was this sort of X factor, and when I saw Nick, I thought he's got this attitude is what it is, a defiance about him," said Hicks.
He could have opted simply for a cute little boy who's sad because his mum has died. "I've seen that movie, I didn't want to see it again. I wanted to do something unexpected with unexpected emotion."
That is how newcomer Nicholas McAnulty came to star in "The Boys Are Back." It's based on the memoir by Simon Carr about a widowed father raising two sons in a household almost free of rules and certainly free of order and cleanliness.
Owen knew it would be essential that he and Nicholas forged a bond before cameras rolled.
"It was a big deal to me that I got out there early and spent some time," the British actor told reporters inside a hotel while camera-wielding fans choked the sidewalks out front. "I deliberately took him on day excursions without anybody else there.
"His mother trusted me to take him off and we went to safari parks and we went to fun playgrounds, and I just hung with him because I knew that it really mattered that it felt like he trusted me and we were safe, for the relationship to work on film. You'd smell it if it was forced or pushed in any way."
On this day, Owen looked tall and lean in black and demonstrated a warmth and playfulness instead of the sense of danger and menace he sometimes brings to the screen.
Throughout a roundtable session with writers, he often flashed the smile that rarely factors into movies such as "The International," but made him a manly magnet for Julia Roberts in "Duplicity." He was quizzed a couple of times about how "Boys" fits into his career plan.
"There's no career plan ... I read a lot of scripts. One thing I've learned is you're better in a film when you've got a big appetite to want to do it. To do it for any other reason is not so good."
Asked if he had ever done any of those movies, he said yes, laughed and refused to name names.
In real life, he is the father of two daughters, but always thought of parenting as separate from movies. "Here was a film really exploring a big part of my life and exploring it in a lovely way," with a script he found deft and beautifully written.
Like Hicks, Owen found Nicholas "a bundle of unpredictable life" and full of energy. "It was about capturing that unpredictability and aliveness; the whole movie was kind of structured around him and his energy levels and making it work."
Owen, who confesses he's a bit of a soft touch when it comes to his girls, is nowhere near as lenient as Joe Warr, his character who believes in a "Just say yes" policy.
"I always thought that days with Dad are different than days with Mum anyway. ... Obviously, he goes too far, but there is something to be said, for we're very quick to say no to our kids," said Owen.
Like a real-life dad who doesn't want one of his children snubbed, Owen takes care to mention George MacKay, the young actor who plays his teen-age son (from the character's first marriage, which ended in divorce).
Warr left when the boy was young and he's buried the pain of that separation. "He just had a very expressive face, it was very moving, just him watching me and Nicholas play. He's also incredibly skilled for a guy of his age; he's a proper actor, his approach to it, knowing what's important, his sense of the craft of it."
The actor didn't meet the book's author (whose name was changed in the screenplay written by Allan Cubitt) until late in the shoot.
"I read the book and I read the script and then it was put to me, did I want to meet him and I really didn't. I felt I wanted to come to the interpretation clean, I wanted my instincts to be there and it would have thrown me to meet him.
"I met him right at the end, he came on set one of the last days of filming with the two boys who are now that much more grown up. It was quite memorable to meet them and then see the two boys meet the two boys that played them."
Hicks, who earned Oscar nominations for directing and co-writing "Shine," about musical prodigy David Helfgott, previewed the movie for Carr and his sons.
The younger, now 19, had to watch the harrowing re-creation of his mother's death from cancer. At one point, Hicks offered to stop the film since it was so emotionally devastating, but they told him to play it to the end.
"You are conscious that the day will come when you get to share a room with this person," whose life you have dramatized, the director acknowledged.
"That's tough, whether it's as it was with David Helfgott, where he was sitting on the floor next to me clinging onto my leg while he's watching the film, or Philip Glass," who was the focus of a Hicks documentary. Composer Glass told the director: "I think you made a wonderful film, I just wish it wasn't about me."
Carr mistakenly thought Hicks had somehow obtained photos of the family's house in New Zealand since the screen version was so close. "He sent me a text message which I treasure -- I've kept it on my phone -- it's like you peered into our lives and put it on the screen."
The memoirist had been surprised that he was even watching a film about his family. After all, when he sold the rights, he figured a film would never get made. Or it wouldn't be any good or ever find a distributor.
"He couldn't believe when it got made with Clive Owen and it turned out rather well with major distribution. What went wrong?" Hicks said with a laugh.
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette movie editor Barbara Vancheri can be reached at bvancheri(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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