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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2007


I AM LEGEND'S ALICE BRAGA

LOS ANGELES -- Although I Am Legend's story rests on Will Smith's shoulders, it turns out his character, Robert Neville, is not the only surviving human.

Neville encounters a woman named Anna and a boy named Ethan, who have heard his daily broadcast and are headed for what they hope will be a sanctuary.

Anna is played by Alice Braga, who said Anna brings a sense of hope to the story.

"I think that hearing Neville's message is the moment that Anna begins to believe there is hope, that there are people out there in the world," Braga said. "This man is alive, and Anna makes the decision to go save him, even if the Infected are around. Trusting the unknown is what starts her journey of hope in the film. They need to connect and be strong together."

Braga did extensive research for her part, looking into survivors of the Holocaust and, more recently, Hurricane Katrina.

"How do people keep walking and keep living after something like that?" she said. "The more I read, the more I understood that it's about having hope. My character has belief and hope still inside her even after all she has seen. I learned a lot about life through this search for Anna."

I Am Legend's lengthy development and shoot helped in that process.

"We had such a long period to do the movie, it gives us so much time to enjoy it," Braga said. "Everything can lead to something else."

I Am Legend is the first big English movie for Braga, 24, who was born in Brazil. It's a big-budget action movie in many respects, although Braga didn't feel that way making in.

"I was the kitchen a lot," she said, laughing.

The filmmakers cast Braga after her performance in the Academy Award-nominated City of God.

"We were so taken with her performance in City of God," writer/producer Akiva Goldsman said. "Alice has a natural beauty and an innate compassion that is evident. There's a glow about her that is palpable; she generates a sense of well-being, which is important because Anna represents hope in the movie. She gives Neville something to reach out for again, and I think Alice brings that quality to her character very authentically."

Braga, 24, said she enjoyed Smith's generosity as an actor.

"It's an enormous pleasure to work with someone who just wants to give you more and more and more, and just wants to open the door for you to be really comfortable," she said. "He was pushing me harder and harder and just looking in my eyes and saying, 'Do you want one more, do you want to try this, do you want this?' Or pushing me to go somewhere where he wanted me to go.

"This is the best thing you could have from someone like him. He could be just in his own world and that's it. And for me, then, learning and I'm in the beginning, and it's my first American movie, so it was an enormous pleasure and opportunity."



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