She was the Jewish bad girl in "Saved," but in "The Life Before Her Eyes," Eva Amurri is the Christian goodie good to Evan Rachel Wood's bad girl -- and she likes it that way. "I was playing a bad girl when I got the script, and I thought, 'What a great thing to do, pull a total 180,'" she said. "Who wants to play one thing all the time anyway?"
Despite their differences, Evan and Eva's characters become best friends who are put to the ultimate test, when they're forced to choose which of them will live or die during a school shooting. "It's a horrifying situation, to be point blank at the end of a gun," Eva said, "and have someone say, 'Who should I kill?'"
Flash forward 15 years later, and you see the consequences of that decision, or at least you think you do. "It's an incredibly nuanced script," Eva said. "I was on the edge of my seat reading it, and it's been very exciting to see how it unfolded. It's so artistic." Trouble is, she can't say how without giving away the film's secret, and nor can we (even though the title nearly gives it away). "With a film with a reveal or a twist, it's hard to make it seem interesting without being able to explain a central part," she said.
What she can say is that she shot the scene during the last three days of the shoot, because "to be hysterical for that long" was draining for both her and Evan, and director Vadim Perelman ("The House of Sand and Fog") wanted them to establish a bond first. "It was nice to have that trust between she and I," Amurri said. Even though Evan is a little younger, the trick was to make them appear the same age on camera: "If anything, I had to seem younger, because Evan is an old soul. She's incredibly mature and intelligent and professional. Everything you see with her is real."
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