Camilla Belle at the premiere of "Push" held at the Mann Village Theater in Westwood, Calif. on January 29th.

As the mystery woman with the ability to influence others’ actions by implanting thoughts in their minds, Camilla Belle has been acting professionally since she was nine months old. Now 22, the rising star has worked opposite some of the biggest names in the business. The L.A. native spoke to MediaBlvd Magazine about spending time in Hong Kong, working with Dakota Fanning, and what she sees for the future of her career.

MediaBlvd Magazine> Did you do any rehearsals for this film?
Camilla Belle> We didn’t really rehearse. I talked to Paul before we started shooting. I went out to Hong Kong a little bit early and really explored the city. And then, Dakota and Chris came out, and I made them their checklist of what to do while they were there. “Here’s good food. Don’t go eat there.”                     

MediaBlvd> Did you experiment with different kinds of food?

Camilla> A little bit. But, I didn’t want to try anything that could potentially make me sick while I was working, so I wasn’t really risky when it came to food. I saw everything in the market, but I didn’t try it.                    

MediaBlvd> What was it like to work on location in Hong Kong for this movie? Did it help to get you into the mood for this story?

Camilla> It definitely helped, being on location for three months. I went out a couple weeks early, before shooting. I was there before everyone else got there, so I really was able to live a bit in Hong Kong, and meet the people. I really did feel complete culture shock. I had never been to Asia before, in my entire life. I didn’t know what to expect. Just to communicate, alone, is really difficult, if you don’t speak Cantonese. They speak English, but it’s hard to know where to go and know who to talk to. It’s really overwhelming. And, that played a huge part in the movie, too. Our characters are Americans who don’t know where they are. They’re on the run in really foreign cities.               

MediaBlvd> Did you enjoy working there?

Camilla> I did. It was really hard for all of us, working there, but at the same time, I learned so much. I went to Beijing for a few days. I went to Thailand for a couple of days. I traveled around a bit. When I had days off, I really took advantage of being in Asia because I had never been there before. I can’t wait to go back. I learned so much.

MediaBlvd> What was the most surprising thing you found in Hong Kong?
Camilla> Just the variety of cultures and the variety of people. It is really overpopulated, but at the same time, there’s so much to discover. We stayed in the mainland, in Kowloon, but then on the island, there’s so many different areas. There are beautiful beaches, and then you go to the new territories. It’s really green. It’s a very diverse city. It was just beautiful to see, and I really explored it. You really had to drive outside the city, in order to see the ancient temples and whatnot.

MediaBlvd> Did you do any kind of martial arts training for this?
Camilla> What I loved about that fight scene was that it wasn’t like martial arts. It wasn’t anything that had to do with formal training. And, our stunt coordinator, Nick Powell, had done films like Braveheart, The Last Samurai and Gladiator, and all these films where you really remember the fight sequences, and I felt like I was in very good hands with him. We had about a week and a half of training, and it was more about the choreography of the fight scene. It’s almost like a dance with your partner. So, we practiced for about a week and a half and, when you get to the day, it’s all about muscle memory, in your body. You just know what to do and, hopefully, you don’t hit the other person in the head too many times and it just works out smoothly. But, it was great. It was so much fun. He was a really good trainer. He’s about as good as it gets.

MediaBlvd> No one cared about you getting grabbed on the street and stuffed in a car, for that scene in the film?
Camilla> It was actually really comical. We were trying to film and they had the cameras out, at one point, but then people kept on looking at the cameras, or they would get in front of us. Paul said, “This is not going to work. We’re not going to find our actors, ever.” So, they had to hide the cameras. They hid four cameras inside buildings and windows, and behind trucks and stuff. We did that one scene where I get grabbed by the two agents, and I wished I wasn’t in the scene, so I could have seen the reactions. Supposedly some people stopped and freaked out, while other people kept on going and couldn’t care less. There were quite a diverse amount of reactions going on.

MediaBlvd> Did anyone get hurt during filming?

Camilla> No one got hurt. Everyone gets bruises. Djimon was untouched! But, we were up and running around, so it was nothing serious.

MediaBlvd> Did you have to do anything to your physicality to indicate what your character is doing?

Camilla> Not really, no. It was quite cerebral, so it was all about the mind. Djimon and I talked a bit before we started shooting. I was like, “Should we do anything that makes it evident that we’re ‘pushing’ someone?” It was kind of hard to figure out what to do. At the same time, I think it would make it kind of campy, if we were doing something really physical. We just wanted to simplify it, so it was more believable and more about the reaction of the person. It wasn’t so much about us, as it was about the reaction.

MediaBlvd> What was your reaction to the special effects with your eyes?

Camilla> We didn’t know what it would look like. We didn’t have to do anything, it was just the eye, so it adds something. There’s a physical effect to what we were doing.

MediaBlvd> What ideas did you have for your character?
Camilla> I can’t think of anything specific, but Paul, as a director and as a person, is very receptive to any ideas, problems, or issues that you had with character development. We’d go up and talk to him. He was very welcomed to ideas, and we discussed things. What was great about Paul was that we’d discuss a scene before we shot it and lay out what we thought. We would figure everything out before we would shoot a scene because the plot itself is very confusing.

MediaBlvd> What did you learn from watching Dakota work?

Camilla> We really bonded over the fact that we’ve both been working our whole lives. She’s been going from project to project. I went to school a lot, in between working. That was the one big difference. But, at the same time, we really did bond over the fact that we approach work in the same way. We both never really studied acting. It’s more about that instinctual sense of acting, where you approach the character, approach the world, show up to set, be professional, do your job and go. We really do approach acting and working the same way, which is great. And, we would go out to dinner and I had to keep reminding myself that I was sitting across from a 13-year-old. She’s so mature, so talented and so professional for her age. All of us were constantly impressed by her.

MediaBlvd> Were you like a big sister to Dakota?
Camilla> She definitely knows what she’s doing, and it’s quite apparent. She’s extremely talented and has picked one incredible project after another, and continues to do so. What was great about working with her is that we both grew up in the business. Being older than her, the only thing I said to her -- and I say it to everyone -- is to really have a strong personal life. You have to have your friends outside of work, and live your life fully outside of work, so that you have something to go back to. To me, this is a job. It’s fun and everything, but it is your job, and you have to look at it that way. The most important thing is to have a good balance. But, she knows what she’s doing. She doesn’t really need any guidance.

MediaBlvd> As you get to do more adult things in the roles you play, is there a thrill to that? Did you see Dakota go through that with this film?

Camilla> She did have a lot of fun with this character. People are going to be shocked that she’s really grown up. She’s not a little kid anymore, especially with this character. She’s cursing and doing all types of things that you wouldn’t expect Dakota Fanning to be doing, and she had a lot of fun with it. Same with me. I’m an adult now and I’m playing adult roles, and it’s exciting. There’s more opportunities, instead of playing kids all the time. There’s more things to play with. There are more diverse characters, and more diverse relationships. It gets more exciting.

MediaBlvd> Did you have any favorite dramatic moments in the movie?

Camilla> I loved my scene with Djimon, when Kira is extremely sick in the hotel room, towards the end of the film. I really enjoyed doing that scene. That was a power struggle, between those two characters, and I had fun doing that.

MediaBlvd> Which of these powers would you like to have yourself?

Camilla> My character’s. I’s want to be a Pusher.

MediaBlvd> Are you splitting time between college and work now?

Camilla> You know, life throws some interesting twists at you. I was supposed to start Columbia University, and I ended up not being able to go because a film went over schedule. My life has gone a different direction right now. I’ve just been focusing on work. But, it’s there. I wasn’t able to start when I planned on it, but we’ll see.

MediaBlvd> What would you like to study?
Camilla> I’m really passionate about languages. And, I love art history, too. That’s what I loved in high school, so I would like to continue with that.

MediaBlvd> You’ve been working for a long time, but your last few films have really taken you to a different level. How do you feel about that?

Camilla> I have been working basically my whole life, which gives me a different perspective. The business has changed a lot, in the sense that I think it’s really useful, if you make a movie like 10,000 B.C. or When a Stranger Calls, that is a somewhat commercial film. For me, the films that are most gratifying are films like The Ballad of Jack and Rose, and this film I just did recently in Brazil. Those are the most gratifying, creatively speaking. On a film like Push, which was great, Paul was really adamant about making it a character piece. It really is about characters, who happen to have these abilities. It’s very realistic. The characters are very raw. They’re very real. They have real relationships. It was definitely challenging, in that sense, as well.

MediaBlvd> Do you have to have a real good sense of who you are, when you’re constantly playing different people, at a period in your life where you’re trying to figure out who you are?

Camilla> Definitely. It’s very true. But, luckily, I went to school my whole life. My best friends are from school, from when I was really little. I always take time, after each project, to be home for a bit, live my life, see my friends and my family, and really come back to being whoever Camilla is. Then, I can really take personal experiences to film. If you don’t live, I don’t know where you’re drawing experiences from. How do you know, if you haven’t lived anything? So, I try to live as much as I can, when I’m off set, and then I have some experiences to draw from.

MediaBlvd> What do you look for in a project?

Camilla> I always look at the character. But then, with a film like 10,000 B.C., it’s not about the character, it’s about the movie and the visual aspect and the fun of working on something like that. It’s definitely about the people that are involved. There are a lot of elements for me. It’s not one thing. It’s really rare, but sometimes you do read a script that really strikes you, when you first read it. When I did The Ballad of Jack and Rose, I read that script and automatically was like, “Okay, I really need to do this movie.” But, it’s very rare for that to happen. I’m not easily impressed. With a movie like this, it’s not a genre that I automatically want to be a part of. But, having watched Paul’s films and knowing that he was involved, and  that we’d be working in Hong Kong, really made me want to be a part of it. So, it’s about the character, the relationships, the director and the writing.

MediaBlvd> What do you have coming up?
Camilla> I did a film in Brazil last year, in Portuguese, called Adrift. It’s a supporting role. It’s about a 14-year-old girl, and her coming-of-age story. It takes place in the ‘80s in Brazil. She’s the first generation of divorced parents, and she’s discovering love for the first time, amongst her family falling apart. Vincent Cassel, who is the lead, is the father, and I play his mistress in the film.

MediaBlvd> How does speaking in another language impact your performance?
Camilla> I’ve always wanted to work in Brazil, and in Portuguese, so it really was a dream come true for me. But, I’ve never studied Portuguese, so my grammar is not perfect. Sometimes I’d want to say different things from the script, so I’d have to check and make sure that I was saying it correctly. But, other than that, it was just such a fulfilling experience. It was really, really incredible.

MediaBlvd> Do you still think in English when you’re working in Portuguese?
Camilla> No. When I speak in Portuguese, I think in Portuguese.