  Kate Bosworth stars with Sigourney Weaver (inset) in the new film, The Girl in the Park. Weaver became a mentor during what Bosworth calls “a very difficult time in my life.”
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There are six million diminutive blonds in Hollywood, and Kate Bosworth is not just one of them. Whether she’s on a surfboard or clutching Superman’s arm on the big screen, Bosworth, 24, has always conveyed “smart” right up there with “cute.”
Bosworth gets a chance to show what she can do in The Girl in the Park, a drama in which she co-stars with Sigourney Weaver.
The film is about finding love in the aftermath of tragedy. Weaver plays a woman frozen by grief and Bosworth is a teenage grifter, a street kid who connects with Weaver and reawakens Weaver’s maternal instincts. David Auburn (Proof) wrote and directed The Girl in the Park. The narrative dances around Weaver’s obsessive hope that Bosworth might be her own daughter, who disappeared as a toddler.
Bosworth, who’s in Toronto for the film festival, says of her Girl in the Park character, “I saw her as living on survival instincts. I didn’t see her as a malicious person. I saw her as a delicious person. But she’s had to live in such a way that she’s had to find a place to sleep from day to day, and there’s no stability. As a hustler, she’s created a certain amount of armour, and nobody’s been able to get through it.”
Until, of course, she meets Weaver’s character, who has similar emotional armour.
“And then they have this love story, not in a sexual way but in a deeply affective way. It’s only through their love for each other they learn to shed that armour and learn to love again. And heal.”
Bosworth may have won her first major film role (in The Horse Whisperer) when she was just 14, but now she says she realizes she started acting much, much earlier.
“I was always entertaining, and I didn’t even realize it,” she says, both amused and embarrassed. “I used to sing at county fairs when I lived in San Francisco ... And recently I was looking back on some very old Christmas tapes with my parents, from when I was about 5 years old, and on the tapes I’m constantly saying to my mom, ‘Watch me! Look! Watch what I can do!’ ”
Bosworth, who is intense and introspective in person, talks about the complexities of being an only child. She says, “There’s a certain loneliness to that.”
Much as she loves her parents, she adds, “I moved around a lot too, so I think there was always a certain loneliness in my life. I’m only able to reflect on it as I look back on my life. I feel as if this is the first time in my life that I’ve had the gift of a little bit of hindsight.”
Courtesy of hindsight, Bosworth says she was fortunate to have had Weaver as a co-worker and mentor during filming of The Girl in the Park.
“I was going through a very difficult time in my life,” she says, “a combination of things. Coming out the other end of a confusing period. I’m realizing how lucky I was to have had her in my life at that point, and to have had this role in which to have put so much of my struggle. That was therapeutic, ultimately.”
Like most celebrities, Bosworth has to deal with public scrutiny in her private life.
“It’s a weird thing. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. I don’t really know how to deal with it. A paparazzo said to me once, ‘You’re a celebrity. Get over it. This is what you signed up for.’ And I understood where he was coming from, but I did my first role when I was only 14. I had no idea this came along with it.
“(But) even if I had known, I would still do this because at the end of the day, I love my job. That is why I do what I do.”
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