NIM’S ISLAND

Casting

ABIGAIL BRESLIN (Nim) is one of the most versatile, charismatic and sought-after actors of her young generation.  A talented and engaging performer, she had the enviable role of playing leading lady to Mel Gibson – at the tender age of five.  Since starring opposite Gibson in M. Night Shyamalan’s  2002 film Signs, Abigail has been able to use her unique talents to do both comedy and drama as well as quirky and unusual roles.

Most memorable is her role in the critically acclaimed Little Miss Sunshine, the irreverent, antic comedy which created a sensation at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.  For her performance as Olive, the ambitious young girl obsessed with winning a beauty pageant, Abigail received a Best Actress Award from the Tokyo International Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award®, a SAG Award and a BAFTA Best Supporting Actress Award.

Abigail also made an impression with her performance in Raising Helen for director Garry Marshall, in which she starred opposite Kate Hudson as well as her older brother, Spencer Breslin.  She has also completed roles in the independent drama Keane, directed by Lodge Kerrigan and produced by Steven Soderbergh; in The Ultimate Gift, co-starring James Garner; and had a surprise role as a perky Elf in The Santa Claus 3.

She was most recently seen in No Reservations for director Scott Hicks co-starring opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart, and can also be seen in the romantic comedy Definitely Maybe opposite Ryan Reynolds.  She has currently completed filming the starring role in American Girl.

On television, Abigail has had guest roles on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Navy N.C.I.S., What I Like About You and Grey’s Anatomy.  She lives in New York City.

JODIE FOSTER (Alexandra Rover), a two-time Academy Award® winner, won her first Oscar® for her poignant performance as a rape survivor in The Accused, for which she also won Golden Globe® and National Board of Review Awards.  She won her second Academy Award® for her work in  the 1991 Oscar®-winning Best Picture, The Silence of the Lambs, as well as a Golden Globe® and BAFTA Award and a New York and Chicago Film Critics Awards for Best Actress.

Foster received her first Oscar® nomination at the age of 14 for her performance in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, also winning awards from the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics.  That year she also became the only American actress to win two BAFTA Awards in the same year, earning Best Supporting Actress and Best Newcomer for Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone.  She earned another Oscar® nomination and won a Screen Actors Guild Award for her work in the title role of  Nell,  which also marked her first film as  producer.

Foster most recently starred in The Brave One for director Neil Jordan, garnering a Golden Globe® nomination for Best Actress.  Before that, she starred in Spike Lee’s Inside Man and the thriller Flightplan, and made a cameo appearance in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s French-language film, A Very Long Engagement.

In all she has appeared in more than 40 films including Panic Room;  Anna and the King; Contact; Maverick; Sommersby;  Shadows and Fog;  Stealing Home; Siesta; Five Corners, for which she won an Independent Spirit Award;  The Blood Of Others;  The Hotel New Hampshire ; and Foxes.  In addition, the multi-lingual Foster loops all of her own dialogue in French for all of her films.

Foster began her career at age three, appearing as “The Coppertone Girl” in a memorable television commercial. Emerging as one of the most successful child actresses of the day, she made her feature film debut in 1972’s Napoleon and Samantha, followed by the role of Becky Thatcher in the 1973 musical version of Tom Sawyer.  In 1974, Foster gave a stand-out performance in Martin Scorsese’s hit Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Two years later, Scorsese cast her in the pivotal role of the young prostitute, Iris, in Taxi Driver, which was only one of five films in which the young actress appeared in 1976.  She also starred in Bugsy Malone, Echoes of a Summer, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane and the original Freaky Friday, for which she earned her first Golden Globe® Award nomination.

Behind the camera, Foster made her directorial debut with the acclaimed Little Man Tate, in which she also starred.  She then directed and produced Home for the Holidays starring Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft and Robert Downey, Jr.In 1992, Foster founded her production company, Egg Pictures.  In addition to Nell and Home for the Holidays, the company has produced the features Waking The Dead and The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, in which she also appeared.  She also served as an executive producer on the Showtime movie The Baby Dance, which won a coveted Peabody Award and received four Emmy Award nominations and three Golden Globe® Award nominations, both including Best Movie Made for Television.  Egg Pictures also presented the award-winning French film Hate in the United States.

Foster graduated with honors from Yale University in 1985, earning a B.A. in Literature.

GERARD BUTLER (Alex Rover/Jack) is best known for his memorable role of Leonidas, King of Sparta, in the big-budget adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300.

Gerard was most recently seen in the smash hit  P.S I Love You, opposite Hilary Swank.  He will next be seen in Guy Ritchie’s new film RocknRolla, also starring Thandie Newton, to be released in Fall of 2008 and he recently wrapped the futuristic thriller Game for Lionsgate.  He made his feature debut in Miramax’s highly acclaimed Mrs Brown, in which he played Billy Connolly’s brother, Archie Brown.  Other credits include One More Kiss, which won the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival;  Harrison’s Flowers;  Shooters;  Wes Craven’s Dracula 2000;  Reign of Fire;   Timeline;  a starring role opposite Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider II;  Dear Frankie; the starring role as the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera, produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group, directed by Joel Schumacher;  Beowulf & Grendel  andChekhov’s The Cherry Orchard,  co-starring Charlotte Rampling and Alan Bates.

Television credits include the title role of Attila, the historic warrior, in the USA Network mini-series Attila the Hun, directed by Dick Lowry;  ITV’s The Jury, co-starring Derek Jacobi and Anthony Sher; the two-part BBC psychological drama Little White Lies; the cult Channel 4 series A Young Persons Guide To Becoming A Rock Star and a starring role in  ITV’s Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married.   Theatre credits include Trainspotting;   Snatch for the Soho Theatre Company  and a starring role opposite Rachel Weisz in the Donmar Warehouse production of Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer.

About the Filmmakers

MARK LEVIN and JENNIFER FLACKETT (Directors/Screenwriters) are that rare Hollywood creature: The husband-wife writer-director team. This unique species is half man-half woman, yet speaks with one creative voice. As married filmmakers, Levin & Flackett spend literally twenty-four hours a day together, seven days a week, sharing in every step of the process side by side. As you can imagine, these days, the comments that Levin & Flackett hear most often are "How do you do it?," "My wife and I need our time apart," and the always popular, "My husband and I would kill each other.”

To friends and colleagues, they are not known individually as “Mark” or “Jennifer” but singularly as “Mark and Jen.”  NIM’S ISLANDis their second movie as film directors, after accomplished careers as screenwriters and television creator-executive producers. They were drawn to write and direct NIM’S ISLANDby their desire to create an adventure movie that they could share and enjoy together with their daughter and son.

The first film that Levin & Flackett directed was Little Manhattan, the romantic comedy about first love, based on their original screenplay. It was released by New Regency and Twentieth Century Fox in 2005.

Levin & Flackett have been working as a creative team for over twelve years. Their feature film careers began when their first screenplay, Drive, was purchased by Scott Rudin and Paramount Pictures. They subsequently adapted the classic children’s book Madeline into the motion picture starring Frances McDormand. They also wrote the romantic comedy Wimbledonfor Working Title Films and Universal Pictures. Other movies they have contributed to as screenwriters include The Perfect Storm, Speed Racer and the Walden Media/New Line co-production Journey 3-D to be released in July 2008.  In television, Levin & Flackett have written and produced pilots for all the major broadcast networks, including ABC’s Roadie, CBS’s The Mysteries of 71st Street, Fox’s The Third Degree, and ABC’s Born In Brooklyn.

Before getting married and beginning their exclusive collaboration, Levin & Flackett wrote separately. Levin had attended the Yale School of Drama as a playwright, then went on to write and produce the much-loved television The Wonder Years for over fifty episodes. He also created and executive produced the NBC/Amblin Entertainment television series Earth 2. Flackett, a graduate of Wesleyan University, began her career as a writer on Steven Bochco’s Civil Wars and LA Law, among others.

After graduating with honors from NYU Film School, PAULA MAZUR’S (Producer/Screenwriter) first feature was Home Of The Brave, a concert film by rock performance artist Laurie Anderson, which premiered at Cannes.  She subsequently produced Jonathan Demme’s Swimming to Cambodia, followed by the Academy Award®-winning short film The Appointment of Dennis Jennings, starring Steven Wright and Rowan Atkinson, which also won an Ace Award; and then the film version of Lily Tomlin’s Tony Award winning Broadway play The Search For Intelligent Life In The Universe, which was nominated for Emmy and Spirit Awards, won an Ace Award for best comedy special, and garnered an American Comedy Award.  Other film credits include Corrina, Corrina starring Whoopi Goldberg and Ray Liotta.

For television, Paula produced and directed Bakersfield Country, a PBS special on country music starring Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. The show was awarded three Emmys for Best Special, Best Performance and Best Editing; HBO’s Kathy and Mo: The Dark Side, which won an ACE Award for Best Comedy Special and the HBO comedy Pros & Cons, which premiered at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, winning Best Actor.   She also produced the film version of the wildly popular off Broadway play The Vagina Monologuess, which world premiered on HBO.

Mazur is currently adapting Tangerine for HBO Films, which she is producing with Danny DeVito.   In development are the features Out of Gas, to be directed by Dean Parisot, and the film version of Steve Martin’s play Picasso at the Lapine Agile, adapted and to be directed by Fred Schepisi, featuring an all-star ensemble cast.