Nim's Four-Letter Words

Nim's Four-Letter Words by Lisa Johnson Mandell
4/2/2008 at 4:11:41 PM

At a time when ten-year-olds are wearing mini-skirts, platform pumps and tattoos, it’s really quite comforting to come across an 11-year-old who is too busy reveling in her own childhood to yet dream of a push-up bra. Such is the case with Little Miss Sunshine Abigail Breslin, even if her Nim’s Island co-star Gerard Butler did call her a “nasty little lawyer.”He was just kidding, of course. Whimsy seems to take hold when you’re sitting on a beautiful beach on Oahu’s west shore, waves crashing behind you and tropical sun shining down upon journalist and talent alike. Since Nim’s Island was filmed on beaches and islands in Australia, Fox figured the least they could do was take us as far as Hawaii to interview stars Jodie Foster, Butler and Breslin.

At first, 300 bare-chested wonder Butler – seemingly making a bid for broader appeal with P.S. I Love You and now Nim’s - told FilmStew it was absolutely great working with Breslin. “Literally, as I was filming with her, I thought, ‘Okay, I could have a kid like this,” he exclaims. “This makes me want to settle down and have kids. Generally, when you work with child actors, they’re very smart, they’re very talented.”In Breslin’s case, evidently smart and talented enough to realize the practicality of saddling a free-spirited Scot like Butler with a swear jar. “I swear a lot, and I try not to,” Butler admits. “But the more I try not to, the more it happens; Abigail charged me two dollars every time I swore [on set]. I’d try to make deals, I’d try to get out of it, but she wouldn’t give me credit. It cost me like 60 or 70 bucks.” Adds Breslin: “He paid a lot. I asked him for $12, he gave me $20, and then he was like, ‘Well now I have credit.’ But that’s not how it works. So I think he learned his lesson. We donated all the money to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).”

Later on, it was Breslin’s answer to another question that really made me wonder about the business savvy of this showbiz youngster. I mentioned that as a kid, I used to think how cool it would be to live like the Swiss Family Robinson or Robinson Crusoe, and wondered if she in her current youth shared that sentiment. “No, I think I would miss watching TV and American Idol and stuff,” she replies.Was Breslin just being a little American girl, or was she cognizant of the fact that both Nim’s and the outrageously popular television show are part of the same News Corp. family, and that she might as well take advantage of the opportunity to promote both at the same time? While I like to think that she was naively chatting about her favorite TV show, perhaps she is indeed already that sophisticated a master of the PR game.