He Knew Right Away
Marshall admitted that he knew immediately that Roberts was who they were looking for. “I remembered I screen-tested her with a bunch of people, including some ringers who were so funny I thought they would blow her right out, but they didn’t. I remember after the screen test, I called Jeffrey Katzenberg and said, ‘We’ve got to get a guy, but the guy’s not so important because we’re going to make it with this girl. She’s got it.’”
Photo by Moviestore Collection/Shutterstock
Their relationship started then with Marshall remarking in a 2011 interview that Roberts was a free spirit in the film. “She liked to try things, was open to all sorts of grown-up things, and yet had a way of acting that was very special,” he explained. “I always remember that she never quite sat. She would always lean or sit on this or sit on that. She would never, like, take a chair and sit down like a normal person. So I used that in the movie. If you watch the movie, she’s always leaning or sitting on strange things. The only time she sat was at the opera.”