SUBMITTED BY Timbo

December 1, 2003 — USA Today talks to the two girls, Sarah and Emma Bolger, who steal the movie "In America".

Odds are that bigger prizes are in store for both girls, thanks to their star-making work in Sheridan's tender, semi-autobiographical tale of an immigrant Irish family's life in a druggy New York tenement in the early '80s.

In America, now playing strongly in seven cities in North America, puts the sisters front and center as enchanted -- and enchanting -- innocents. They befriend neighbors like Djimon Hounsou's African painter as they help their parents (Samantha Morton and Paddy Considine) cope with poverty, a dangerous pregnancy and a tragedy.

Their casting, like the movie itself, has an air of being almost magical. Sarah, who was 10 at the time, was originally rejected as too young to handle a role envisioned for a 14-year-old.

After her baby sister got the director to see her, Sarah says, "At the end of doing scenes he said, 'You've got the part.' It was funny, the scenes we were doing I had to cry and when he told me, I was still crying -- and I didn't know what I was crying for, the scene or the result of being cast in the film."

Read the rest at the link below.