Young in years, mature in skills

HER director, Marcos Siega, called her the best actor of her generation.

Her costar, Ron Livingston, said he knows how guys on the PGA tour feel when a 16-year-old girl enters the field and dominates.

And another costar, James Woods, sang her praises during the press junket for their movie, the satirical comedy “Pretty Persuasion.”

“He keeps calling me the Meryl Streep of my generation,” Evan Rachel Wood said. “And I’m like, ‘Dude, that’s intense.’ ”

There are the “it-was-great-to-work-with-them” compliments, and then there are these. They are beyond compliments. And the strange thing is that you might be thinking, “Who is Evan Rachel Wood?”

It’s not surprising that you might not recognize the name. She hasn’t starred in a so-called blockbuster or given an acceptance speech at the Academy Awards. But she’s obviously creating a stir on the set.

Wood, yet to turn 18, still has a lot of little girl in her, according to her mother, Sara Lynn Moore. But ask anyone who has worked with her and they’ll tell you she’s beyond her years when it comes to acting.

“She can turn it on and off easier than I’ve ever seen anyone do,” said Siega, who directed Wood and company in “Pretty Persuasion,” his second feature film.

Wood plays 15-year-old Kimberly Joyce, a high school sophomore and aspiring actress. Kimberly believes the world is an orchestra and she is the conductor, and she goes about wrecking lives with a false claim that a teacher sexually harassed her and her friends.

After reading Skander Halim’s script, Siega recalled, he thought that the film would work under only one condition.

“Going into this project, I knew that the movie was going to live and die by whoever plays Kimberly,” Siega said.

He originally cast Wood as Kimberly’s best friend, Brittany.

“Marcos came and asked how I would feel about playing Kimberly, and I was like, ‘Ooooooh, that’s hard,’ ” Wood said.

Her mind flashed back to Kimberly’s role in the script: She appears in nearly every second of the film, and along the way performs a sexy dance and striptease, implies sexual encounters, reads a nasty letter to her teacher and makes constant crude comments.

Then she accepted.

“I was like, ‘Oh wow, I’m actually going to have to do that now,’ ” Wood said. “I can’t just laugh at it. I have to do it.”

Wood was 16 when she shot the film, presenting quite a challenge to Siega, who had to ask her to fake an orgasm for the camera at one point during the filming.

“I said to her, if you’re really ever uncomfortable with anything, Evan, tell me and you know what, I’m going to make the crew do it first,” Siega said. “And she pulled that card a few times.”

The entire crew had to go shirtless for one scene involving Wood and costar Jane Krakowski.

“I looked around and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is my job. I’m at work right now and my director is standing behind the camera with his shirt off, and we’re all supposed to be taking this seriously,’ ” Wood said with a laugh. “That was a pretty memorable moment.”

So what does her family think of all this? Well, luckily for Wood, she comes from a family of actors, so they can relate.

Her parents, who are divorced, spent a number of years in theater, and her older brother, Ira, actually has a small role in “Pretty Persuasion.” He said there was one scene in the movie he would forever refuse to watch.

When he whispered it to his mother, she said, “Oh God, I don’t like that part either.” They didn’t identify the scene, and even after seeing the movie it might be difficult to narrow down which one they’re referring to.

When Wood went to see “Pretty Persuasion” with her mom, she had to find someone to sit between them. “She’s like, ‘Oh Evan, I’ve seen the movie.’ I’m like, ‘I know but I’ve never seen it next to you and I don’t plan on it. I don’t want to feel your presence. I have to pretend like you’re not here.’ ”

But mom understands. And she encourages her daughter to take on tough roles.

“I think she’s a really brave actress,” Wood’s mother said. “I wouldn’t want to see her doing things that didn’t challenge her.”

Wood played a similarly provocative role in “Thirteen,” an indie movie about a girl who discovers sex and drugs. She played the kidnapped daughter in Ron Howard’s “The Missing” alongside Tommy Lee Jones. Coming up, she is costarring with Edward Norton in “Down in the Valley.” She will be living on her own soon for the first time in New York City when she begins her “dream come true” part in a musical romance featuring Beatles songs and directed by Julie Taymor.

WOOD has been acting ever since she can remember.

“Once I was old enough to walk and talk, I was pushed out on stage, and I just kind of did it ever since,” she said. “It wasn’t until I was about 9 or something that I realized that this was a really special thing I was getting to do and I wanted to keep doing it.”

Wood says her role as Kimberly has been the toughest she’s played so far in her career.

“Definitely, just because it’s the first role I’ve played that when I watch it, there’s not a single trace of me,” she said. “There’s not one little bit of Evan in there. It’s just completely somebody different.”

And the film didn’t seem to corrupt her despite having to say and do ridiculous and evil things for 23 straight days. For now, though, she claims to have shed Kimberly Joyce.

“I kept the wig, though,” she said with a smile. “So you never know, she could come back any time.”

And we know how easily she can turn it back on.