Gil Bellows, an Emmy-winning producer as well as a veteran actor, joined the cast of upcoming ‘House at the End of the Street’ as local law enforcement officer Bill Weaver, whose past relationship with the character of Ryan colors his budding romance with Sarah. “Gil has that cop masculinity, with a bit of darkness underneath,” says Elisabeth Shue. “That kind of mystery is really interesting.”

Weaver and Sarah meet when she tries to get information about Ryan’s past. They have an immediate spark. “Bill is the friendly face of law enforcement in town,” says Bellows. “Elisabeth Shue is a bundle of positivity and in this world if you’re a very positive person people seem to think that you must be crazy. I happen to think it’s just great and really good for everybody else’s general morale. I’ve always liked her from a distance and now I’ve had a chance to work with her up close and personal and she’s definitely a super cool lady.”

The police officer has protective feelings toward Ryan that have their roots deep in the past. “There’s a lot of history that goes back to well before Sarah and Elissa come to town and my character is a part of that,” he says. “They are struggling to understand the world that they’ve just stepped into. Part of what I do is give them some context because most of the townspeople are extremely judgmental about Ryan. I offer a slightly different perspective.

“A lot of bad things happened a long time ago,” says Bellows. “Weaver believes that the boy isn’t responsible. He sees both sides of who Ryan is. You get to see both sides of all the characters, really. We’re playing within a genre where people make snap judgments about whether this is a good character or this is a bad character. I think this film does a really good job of playing against that.”

The filmmakers are particularly proud to have discovered Eva Link, a gifted young actress from Ottawa, and given her a small but crucial role in her first film. “When you go into smaller cities, you never quite know how deep the talent pool is going to be,” says producer Aaron Ryder. “We were shocked to see how talented this young girl is. I don’t think she had done much more than a high school play, but she’s a real talent. She may take Hollywood by storm.”

In the end, the producer says, the entire cast’s commitment was critical to the success of the film. “Everybody was working towards the same endgame,” says Ryder. “We had a relatively short period to shoot and it was a tricky three-point balance. They had to be really dedicated to making the days, to finding the best parts of the characters, and making a fun movie. I think that we achieved that and in large part it’s because of these actors and the way they meshed together and took the job really seriously.”

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To play Elissa’s errant mother, Sarah, in the new movie ‘House at the End of the Street’ the filmmakers brought in the Academy Award-nominated actress, Elisabeth Shue. “Elisabeth is a great actress and a really special person as well,” says Mark Tonderai. “She’s just quality. It was also great getting to work with someone I had a crush on as a kid.”

The director says that Jennifer Lawrence and Shue’s real life experiences added a unique dimension to their characters’ mother-daughter relationship. “Elisabeth became a huge star at a very young age,” he says. “She was about 19 when she made ‘The Karate Kid’ and it had a massive impact. Jennifer was about the same age when she made ‘Winter’s Bone’. When we were shooting, she was just starting to experience fame. I felt we’d be able to get that kind of frisson between mother and daughter.”

‘House at the End of the Street’ was a reunion for Shue and producer Aaron Ryder, who had previously worked together on the 2008 off-beat comedy, ‘Hamlet 2’. “Elisabeth is fantastic,” says Ryder. “She’s a real pro. She’s one of those actresses who make your movie better just by being in it. She’s sexy and talented, and you like her the minute she comes on the screen. Every time I see her in front of the camera, I think, that’s a movie star. She just has that glow about her.”

Sarah and Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) have reversed mother and daughter roles at the beginning of the film and Sarah is struggling to regain authority. “Sarah is newly divorced with a 17-year-old daughter,” explains Shue. “She used to be a rock ‘n’ roll mom, following her husband from show to show, but now she and her daughter have moved to a small town looking for a fresh start. Sarah has not been a hands-on mother. She’s less mature in many ways than her daughter, who pretty much takes care of her, but the challenges she faces force her to become a mother in the end.

“It’s an unusual dynamic and one of the reasons I really liked the script,” adds the actress. “Jen was perfect in the role because as a person she has such a strong presence that it was easy for me to feel a little immature around her.”

The script’s unexpected twists and turns fill the movie with a pervasive sense of dread and ratchet up the suspense, according to Shue. “I can usually see them coming, but I was surprised while reading it. What’s great is that they are not just there for shock value. They are grounded in the story, which makes it all the more haunting and unnerving. The movie is tense and scary from the moment it begins. The girl who stabbed her parents is believed to be living in the woods and from the beginning of the film, there’s this feeling that there is somebody watching. That element pervades the atmosphere and elevates the tension.”

The film is both smart and scary, says Shue, a rare combination in her experience. “I think the audience will be scared from the moment they sit down in their seats all the way through to the end of the film. They’ll be engaged by the psychologically complexities and then terrified because there are some truly scary moments that will have them jumping out of their seats.”

Shue says that at this point in her career, the people she will be working with are usually the deciding factor in accepting a role that will take her away from her family for weeks or months. “Mark is such an extraordinary director. He’s so warm and, as a former actor, he understands what we’re going through and makes sure everybody is very comfortable on the set. He has injected a lot of style into the film, but it’s never overwhelming. The camera is not the most important character, but it does work in a really creepy way at times.”

After surviving early success herself, the actress has a great appreciation for her young co-stars’ talent and tenacity. “I just have so much respect for both Jen and Max Thieriot—for the depth of their talent, as well as their lack of ego. I had seen ‘Winter’s Bone’, so I knew what an extraordinary actress Jen was. There’s a real stillness to her performance that is electrifying, especially in the moments of fear and panic. She’s like a colt, feeling her legs for the first time, but she also has a maturity that is surprising for somebody her age. She’s very comfortable in her own skin.”

Shue’s dedication and professionalism were an inspiration to Lawrence. “Working with Elisabeth was unbelievable,” she says. “She asks real questions that get you thinking. It was a very intense shoot and sometimes I was on autopilot, but she would stop and ask why we would do things. She always made good, thoughtful points.”

As Ryan, Elissa’s love interest in the film, Max Thieriot reminded Lawrence of an acting legend and one of her favorite stars. “He’s like Paul Newman reincarnated,” she says. “And it takes a lot for me to say that—I love Paul Newman. He is good-looking and immensely talented, but he’s also like a cowboy. He doesn’t seem to care. He sits in his trailer and listens to country music and chews tobacco. It’s sexy.”

Image Courtesy of  Featureflash / Shutterstock.com

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In an intense and complex role, actor Max Thieriot managed to keep things relaxed on the set of ‘House at the End of the Street’ while delivering a riveting and nuanced performance, says Mark Tonderai. “Max was very loose and very, very funny,” says the director. “His performance has such beautiful shadings to it. Watching it a second time, knowing what you know about the story, illuminates all kinds of subtleties that may have gone unnoticed during a first viewing. It has been said that filmmaking is 90 percent casting and it’s absolutely true. This is an incredibly difficult part and I can’t imagine anyone who could have done it better.”

Thieriot says the script set his mind racing on the first read. “I was shocked and surprised by the originality of the story. The twists and madness of it really caught my imagination. I never saw the ending coming, and I can usually predict how a script will end.”

Playing Ryan was an opportunity to create a unique character, unlike any Thieriot had played before. “He is really intense,” the actor says. “He has a lot of stuff going on and it is really exciting to play someone out of the ordinary. Mark worked with me on a deeper level than I think most directors do and that definitely helped.

“Clearly, Ryan had a traumatic and tormented childhood that transformed him into someone outside the norm,” Thieriot continues. “He lives as a hermit because he knows he is misunderstood and looked down upon. When Elissa comes into his life, she sees him in a different light. That changes something in him. It exposes a part of him that even he didn’t know was there.”

Ryan is hiding some devastating secrets about his past, but the director and the actor agreed that he is also living his life without any telltale shadows of guilt. “He isn’t consciously concealing anything,” says Thieriot. “It all seems normal to him and that’s how I played it moment to moment.”

Tonderai’s bible was a real help in establishing the character, he says. “You don’t often get to work with a director who goes that extra mile. Mark is so committed to the work. You can’t help but be drawn to his passion and enthusiasm.”

Although he was not familiar with Jennifer Lawrence’s work before the film, Thieriot says it was clear from day one that she had what it takes to become a star. “When we began this film, she hadn’t had any of the success she had now,” he notes. “She had done some television and a couple of independent films. ‘The Hunger Games’ was still just a book. But Jennifer’s acting talent just seems to come naturally to her.”

The role was challenging for the young actor, both physically and emotionally. Like Lawrence, he found the movie’s intensely physical fight sequences demanding. “It’s hard to get to where you need to be in those moments,” he says. “Your emotions have to be ridiculously high. I want it to be as real as possible, so I tell people, just hit me, just kick me; it’s not going to hurt. It needs to look real. Convincing people that it’s okay to go a little bit further can be one of the most difficult parts.”

That level of commitment impressed Thieriot’s cast mates. “Max is a wonderful actor,” Lawrence says. “He can just turn it on and off. It was eerie to watch the light in his eyes change the instant Mark called action. All of a sudden he was a different person. It never felt like acting with Max.”

Image Courtesy of  Featureflash / Shutterstock.com

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Before shooting commenced of the new horror movie ‘House at the End of the Street’, Mark Tonderai developed what he calls the “bible” for this film, an almost 100-page document that outlines his ideas on character, tone, lighting, themes and more. He distributed the meticulously detailed and lavishly illustrated tome to cast and crew to ensure they were all on the same page during the brief shoot. “It’s crucial when you start a film that you’re all making the same movie in terms of theme, concept and character,” says the director, who created a similar guide for his first film. “Every scene is important. And every scene’s a challenge. We were on a tight schedule and I had to make sure to seize my days.”

Producer Aaron Ryder was initially skeptical, but came to understand how essential the bible is to Tonderai’s filmmaking process, and to creating the hair-trigger tension at the heart of the story. “He put a lot into it, a lot of ideas and themes from the movie, as well as how it was going to shoot it, how to light it and the texture of it. A lot of directors don’t think that far ahead.”

While acknowledging the collaborative nature of moviemaking, Tonderai made sure that everyone from actors to department heads to producers to crewmembers had an opportunity to share his vision. “Everyone comes to the material with their own point of view, which is a positive,” he says. “But if the crew doesn’t know what’s in my head or the costume department isn’t aware of what the lighting is going to be, or the gaffer doesn’t know what sort of visual richness I want, then I’m at a disadvantage. With this as a guide, choices were not made based on opinions. They were made based on character and theme and story. There was a reason for everything.”

The extra preparation also helped the shoot go more smoothly. “Every time there was a question, I would say, ‘go to the bible; you will find it all in there.’ It was our guide, our arbitrator, our armor. It informed everybody about the film I wanted to make. I didn’t have to speak. I just showed them my images.”

Line producer Robert Menzies had never seen a director share so much of his advance preparation with the crew. “The bible served the production incredibly well. It was a very intense read. It was very focused and touched on just about every single aspect, allowing the crew to really get inside the head of our director. They understood from that document what his vision was for wardrobe, for art department, for camera—the look of the whole piece. And I think it set the tone for the whole production, so it was a phenomenal piece of work.”

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The story of ‘House at the End of the Street’, in cinemas on September 21, is set in suburban Pennsylvania, but the filmmakers took their production to Ottawa, Ontario, for the 28-day shoot. “I never imagined we’d be shooting this film in Ottawa,” says producer Aaron Ryder. “I’ve shot films in Toronto and Vancouver, but I’d never been to Ottawa. I didn’t quite know what to expect. I didn’t even know if there was going to be a crew base there. But Rob Menzies, our line producer, lured us there. There was a film that was just finishing, a crew that was available, and the incentives attracted us.”

They discovered that Ottawa is a versatile and relatively unknown city that lends itself well to moviemaking. “A place like Albuquerque pretty much looks like Albuquerque,” Ryder says. “You have to go to great lengths to make it look like a different place. Whereas Ottawa is endlessly adaptable. It can double for Chicago or Boston or parts of New York. We found that the city has a lot to offer.”

Menzies, who is also one of the owners of Ottawa-based production company Zed Filmworks, helped Ryder and Mark Tonderai, the director, scout locations and assemble the crew. “The movie is very hip and it’s an exciting story,” he says. “Ottawa was perfect for it from the standpoint of the types of locations we have here. When Mark and Aaron came to do some scouting, they got a real sense of what the crews were going to be like. Ottawa is an undiscovered gem of a town. It’s between two of Canada’s two big production hubs, Toronto and Montreal, so we can pull from those resources and we’ve got locations that have never been on film before. You’ve got a film community that is welcoming production with open arms. There’s a pride in having a film of this caliber shot locally.”

According to Menzies, the crew outperformed even his high expectations. “It was a really great opportunity to showcase the talent of a phenomenal art department. This group worked so hard and they’re so dedicated to their craft. They managed to produce incredible sets without a big budget. They built entire sets, dressed some locations 100 percent, ripped apart people’s houses, made something drastically different, and then put it all back at the end of the day. It stretched us to the max, but I’m so proud of them.”

The filmmakers were extremely happy with the transformations the art department carried out. “Lisa Soper, the production designer, created so many great sets,” says Ryder. “She did an amazing job of turning a very ordinary restaurant into a classic Pennsylvania diner. She turned an ordinary house into a unique one for Ryan’s home. The amount of time she spent on that was impressive.”

Full of hidden corners and unseen dangers, terror conceivably lurks around every corner of the house. “And the unknown is always more frightening,” says Ryder. “It’s that thing that could grab your leg when you’re climbing downstairs in your basement at night. That thing that pops out when you’re walking through the woods at night. It’s not being able to see what’s out there that’s infinitely more frightening.”

The level of detail and imagination that went into creating Ryan’s neglected homestead unnerved even the actors. “That place was really scary,” says Shue. “I couldn’t believe they found a house that creepy. Everyone was scared to be in it. It was very moldy and dark and it even smelled weird. We were always imagining all the scary things that must have gone down in that house for real.”

Tonderai believes that the finished product is much more than simply an effective genre film. “People often dismiss horror films, but the best thrillers or horror say something important,” says Tonderai. “I reworked parts of the script not by saying I need a chase sequence here, but by drawing the reality out of the characters and the situation. We made sure that from the beginning of the film, people identify with characters, so that in any situation the audience goes with them. I call that giving the film a soul. For example, Jen’s character is a bit sloppy and surly, but she’s a teenager. You feel for her. She likes that boy next door and she’s the only one who gives him the time of day. That makes you like her.”

The director’s goal, he says, was to make the audience his partners. “I want to really scare them but not with cheap tricks. I believe that if you treat the audience with real respect and intelligence, they will become your co-conspirators. If you can make people care about the characters, then put them in jeopardy, it builds—first gear, second gear, and on and on. At the end, when you hit that final cut to black, it stays with them.”

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‘House at the End of the Street’, premiering on September 21, is based on an original short story by veteran writer, director and producer Jonathan Mostow, and underwent an extensive development process by Mostow and his producing partner, Hal Lieberman. “It’s uncommon to find material like this already really well-developed by expert filmmakers,” Aaron Ryder says. “Because of that, a lot of very experienced directors were interested in this project.”

With a deep pool of talent to draw from, Ryder and his fellow producers eventually selected Mark Tonderai, who had just created a stir in the independent film world with his debut feature, ‘Hush’, a tense and tightly plotted British thriller. “We were really excited to meet Mark because of Hush,” says Ryder. “With a relatively small budget and a limited amount of time, he created a really terrifying film. Hush reminded me of Jonathan Mostow’s ‘Breakdown’. It’s a really well-made, well-crafted film and Mark got the job because of that.”

In his sophomore outing, Tonderai stays one step ahead of his audience, keeping them off balance by creating plausible doubt and mounting suspicions. “This is a film that’s all about what lies beneath,” he says. “It’s about dualities. Everyone has that within them and I think that’s why the film works. Parenthood versus coming of age. Grief and redemption. First love and second chances. These are all the things that we talk about in this film. It is what gives the film a soul and keeps it from being just another horror-thriller. We wanted to elevate the genre and we worked really hard to do it.”

It was his desire to make a psychological thriller that achieved more than just scares that Tonderai says fueled his passion throughout the two years it took to make the film. “As a director it’s important to find something that strikes a chord with you, so I don’t look at story as much as I look at what the story is trying to say.”

That included exploring the relationships between Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence), her mother (Elizabeth Shue), and the enigmatic boy next door (Max Thieriot). “I had just had a child and I felt strongly that I wanted to deal with the issue of parenthood,” says the director. “I never forgot that this film is a thriller, but it is also about parents and how they can help us become who we are. And it’s a love story. A girl moves into a new home. She ends up falling for the neighbor boy who’s been through this horrific event. Everyone in the community is against them. It’s a very romantic notion.”

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The filmmakers of upcoming horror ‘House at the End of the Street’ scored a major casting coup when they selected Jennifer Lawrence to play Elissa. Lawrence, whose career has skyrocketed in the past two years, had already starred in the searing independent drama ‘Winter’s Bone’, for which she would be nominated for an Oscar at age 20. But she had not yet been cast in the role that would propel her to stardom, Katniss Everdeen in the action blockbuster ‘The Hunger Games’. Still, according to Aaron Ryder, her potential was unmistakable.

“The minute you meet Jennifer, you realize this girl has a very long career ahead of her,” says the producer. “She’s incredibly talented. Her work in ‘Winter’s Bone’ was one of the best performances I’d seen in a long time. She walked into my office on a general meeting before we even read the script and I couldn’t figure out if she was 30 years old or 18. She has a maturity and wisdom about her that is rare. Some people are just naturally confident, and that’s certainly the case with Jen. She’s exceptional. She’s a superstar in the making and we’re lucky to have her.”

The filmmakers cast Lawrence shortly after the release of ‘Winter’s Bone’. “With ‘The Hunger Games’, she became huge,” says Tonderai, the director. “But at the time, it was a risk. It obviously paid off. Jen seized the part and made a difficult, complicated role her own.”

Lawrence had only a handful of films under her belt at the time and the idea of taking on a horror-thriller for the first time was immensely appealing. “This was something completely different for me,” says Lawrence. “I had never worked in this genre before and it was an amazing experience to do something so completely out of my comfort zone. But I really liked that it wasn’t about scaring people with blood or what I think of as ‘boo’ elements. The characters are very well developed and you find yourself getting scared for them in a personal way. You are both invested in the love story and afraid for Elissa. It is a very sophisticated way to frighten an audience.”

The actress says she also responded to the way the script deals with the idea of how we make choices about other people. “We constantly tell ourselves to listen to our instincts,” Lawrence says. “But what if you go out on a limb listening to your gut and then you end up being wrong? There are so many twists in the characters that you never know who you can trust. You spend the entire movie wondering.

“I love horror movies,” she admits. “I love scary shows like ‘Celebrity Ghost Story,’ which is not supposed to be scary but scares me to death. I’m like a five-year-old. My imagination is out of control.”

She credits Tonderai with making the fear factor real and visceral by keeping the focus on good storytelling and realistic characters. “I had faith in Mark,” she says. “He always saw it as a character piece, with no cheap scares, just humans being frightened, because we can’t trust ourselves. He’s the most inspiring person I’ve worked with. He really cares about what he does, which you see in things like the bible. He broke down the entire movie, including each character. It helped us get a better perspective on everything.”

The role, with its complicated action scenes, required more physicality than the young actress had ever handled before. “There was a lot more thinking on my feet than I had done previously,” Lawrence says. “In a big emotional scene with another actor, we can always rehearse it. But how in the world are you going to rehearse running upstairs, screaming and crawling on the floor? I would sit there before Mark called action playing it over and over in my head, but it could turn out completely different in the moment. You don’t know what can happen until you do it.”

Because her character is a budding musician, Lawrence got the opportunity to return to a passion she had abandoned. “I love to sing,” she says. “But once I became an actress, I shut it all down. It was so much fun to go to the studio with Benji Hughes and Steve Lindsey, who are absolute geniuses. We recorded music for hours and hours.”

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Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence, fresh off her success in the worldwide hit ‘The Hunger Games’, and Oscar nominee Elisabeth Shue (‘Leaving Las Vegas’, ‘Piranha 3D’) star in ‘House at the End of the Street’; an edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller about a teenager, Elissa, and her divorced mom, Sarah, who move into an upscale neighborhood to start a better life. But after they learn of rumors that the nearby woods are haunted by a homicidal killer, and Elissa befriends the mysterious sole survivor of a grisly double murder that took place in the house next door, their dreams for a brighter future spiral into a twisted nightmare.

Things go smoothly at first: Sarah (Elizabeth Shue) finds a good job and meets a nice guy while Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) settles in at school and finds herself drawn to the boy next door, Ryan (Max Thieriot, ‘My Soul to Take’). Ryan seems like a kindred spirit, misunderstood and passionate, and Elissa sympathizes with his isolation—he is still shunned by the town years after his deranged sister Carrie Anne murdered their parents in a fit of inexplicable rage.

But as Ryan and Elissa spend more time together, details of his past come to the surface. Finding out the truth could be the worst thing that ever happened to Elissa.

‘House at the End of the Street’ is directed by Mark Tonderai (‘Hush’). David Loucka (‘Dream House’) wrote the screenplay based on a story by Jonathan Mostow (‘Surrogates’, ‘Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines’).

Exploring the House

A spooky, decaying house, a young man with a terrifying secret and a teenage girl with a mind of her own are classic elements of horror-thriller movies, but in ‘House at the End of the Street’, a team of ambitious and creative filmmakers transcends the genre with moody, stylish visuals, realistic and relatable characters, and mysterious secrets hidden in plain sight.

“‘House at the End of the Street’ is complicated in the way most good movies are,” says producer Aaron Ryder. “It is a bit of a Hitchcockian thriller, geared toward a younger audience with a great young cast. The script is really good—and by that I mean really scary.”

The characters in ‘House at the End of the Street’ are haunted by a horrific tragedy that took place several years before the movie starts. “A couple was murdered by their mentally handicapped daughter who has disappeared,” says Ryder. “Now Elissa and her mother Sarah move into the house next door to where this massacre happened. There is a single survivor, a young man named Ryan, still living in the house. Elissa begins a relationship, maybe her first love, with this kid. But it turns out there’s an underlying evil within this town.”

Although this taut psychological thriller is full of the kinds of twists and surprises that keep audiences on the edge of their seats, ‘House at the End of the Street’ is a character-driven film, says the producer. “One of the things I like about this movie and these characters is that no one is stereotypical,” says Ryder. “You don’t have the stereotypical mother-daughter relationship. Elissa is actually a bit more responsible than Sarah. Ryan is dark and mysterious, but also very vulnerable and really attractive. You can see why a young girl would be attracted to him.”

Image Courtesy of  House at the End of the Street

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Jennifer Lawrence, star of ‘The Hunger Games’, says one thing instantly drew her into the depths of Katniss: “Her strength.” She continues: “I’m always drawn to strong characters, because I want to be like that. This is a girl who has the whole world placed on her shoulders and she becomes a kind of futuristic Joan of Arc.

I just knew that I had so much respect for the books and who she is that there was nothing I wouldn’t do to bring that out in the right way. I also loved that Gary understood that this movie is not about Katniss looking cool with a bow-and-arrow – it’s about her being heartbroken by all that she has to do.”

The actress was undeterred by what she knew would be intense scrutiny by Katniss’ millions of fans. “There’s a lot of pressure when you’re playing a character so many people are crazy about, but I felt I could rest easy because I was committed to do the very best that I could,” Lawrence states. “I knew we had a group of talented people focused on making the best possible movie and that’s what I believed in.”

With Lawrence cast, the next task was to find the boy with whom she is paired in the Games: her co-Tribute, Peeta Mellark, who has long had a secret crush on Katniss but cannot be sure if she is to be trusted. Taking on Peeta is Josh Hutcherson, best known for his roles in ‘The Kids Are All Right’ and ‘Bridge to Teribithia’ — and once again Ross was instantly certain about the choice.

“It was unbelievably clear with Josh. He came in and was able to articulate everything we felt about the character,” the director recalls. “He said ‘Peeta is someone who can disarm the world with his charm, but he knows who he loves and he’s always loved Katniss. He loves her so intensely, she is the one person he would give everything for.’ After that, I felt ‘now I have Peeta and I can do this film.’”

Suzanne Collins was equally taken with the casting. She put it this way to Entertainment Weekly: “If Josh had been bright purple and had six foot wings and gave that audition, I’d have been like ‘Cast him!’ ‘We can work around the wings!’ He was that good.”

Hutcherson remembers that the minute he began reading the book, he was swept up and felt a connection with Peeta. “I’ve never seen a character so close to me as a person,” he says. “His self-deprecating humor, his outlook on life, and the way he wants to stay true to who he is no matter what are all things I could really relate to from my own life. I was very into Peeta from the get-go.”

As the Games get underway, Peeta becomes even clearer about his aim. “His goal is to make sure Katniss survives,” Hutcherson explains. “His greatest skill is his ability to talk with people, to negotiate and manipulate, and he uses that not in a conniving way, but to protect Katniss.“

That was easy for Hutcherson, given his rapport with Lawrence. “I think Jen perfectly encapsulates a young woman who finds the power to take care of herself and others around her. She has both a hardness and a vulnerability that’s beautiful and really genuine,” he says of his co-star.

Playing Katniss’ longtime best friend in District 12 is Australian actor Liam Hemsworth.  He, too, came to the set with a very strong sense of his character. “Gale is a decent but strong-minded guy who hates nothing more than the Capitol,” says the actor. “He hates everything they stand for. He hates what they do to people.

And he thinks the Hunger Games are very, very wrong. With Katniss, he’s always felt they were each other’s only escape from this horrible world they live in. But once Katniss is picked for the Hunger Games, he is forced to watch this whole thing unfold with Peeta, wondering who she is really meant to end up with.”

Notes Jon Kilik: “Casting ‘The Hunger Games’ was like fitting pieces of an epic puzzle together and Liam as Gale was one of those perfectly matching pieces. He’s got such a strong physical presence, and a kind of natural heroic quality, that really embodies who Gale is in the book.”

District 12 is also home to the one person who fuels Katniss’ survival instincts like no other: Primrose, the little sister Katniss swore she would always protect and whose place she takes in the Games. In auditions, Ross was immediately impressed with Willow Shields, an 11-year-old from Albuquerque, New Mexico. “Willow was one of those amazing finds, and I was dumbstruck that a girl at her age could have so much talent,” says Ross.

Says Shields, “Prim is someone who has had a really rough life and yet she’s always really helpful and nice to her sister.”

Once Katniss is sent to the Capitol, Primrose is left in the care of her traumatized, widowed mother, who finally begins to awaken from her daze. Mrs. Everdeen is played by Paula Malcomson, the Irish actress seen on “Deadwood,” “Lost” and “Sons of Anarchy.” For Malcomson, ‘The Hunger Games’ was a true ensemble experience.

“Gary put together a great cast. He is someone for whom every detail is precious and that’s the stuff actors love:  all that connective tissue that allows you to explore the moments between the moments,” she says. “I found it exciting to see this phenomenal book brought to life by people who cared so much about what they were doing.”

Image Courtesy of   Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com

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