Emma Roberts and Freddie Highmore on Their New Film, Summer Reading, and Teen Lushes

How seriously do each of you take your continuing educations? Freddie, you're at Cambridge, right?

FH: That's right.

How much longer do you have?

FH: I've got three more years. I just finished my first year on Friday.

Congratulations!

FH: Thanks! Yeah, it's nice to get out, I guess, after finishing all that hectic exam time. But that's been fantastic. I have three more years, and the third year is abroad, so...

Emma, are you interested in college?

ER: I'm enrolled right now in the School of Life. I deferred from Sarah Lawrence, so I think I'm going to try to find time to go there. But for now, no. I read all the time, though. I read a book a week. I try to keep my mind working.

What have you read recently?

ER: I just finished this book called The Autobiography of an Execution, about this lawyer who represents people on death row. It's really morbid, but it's really good. Now I'm reading a memoir by Elizabeth McCracken (An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination), which is also really depressing but also really amazing.

FH: Emma is incredibly well-read.

ER: Thank you! But the best book I've read this year is Art and Madness. Have you heard of that one? By Anne Roiphe?

Oh, yeah.

ER: I read that in literally a day.

So a lot of memoirs. I'm about halfway through Keith Richards's book (Life). Have you read that?

ER: No, but I have it. Everyone says that's really good. But you should read Art and Madness! It's really interesting.

All right, we'll trade. Back to this parallel New York, though, I was thinking that if George were a real public high-school senior in the city today, he'd be diagnosed with a learning disability and/or medicated. Do you think George has a learning or personality disorder of some sort?

FH: [Long pause] I don't know. If he did, I wouldn't say it was that strong. Although it does seem rather easy now to prescribe people various things. I don't know whether it's a learning disorder or not, but I would say that George is extremely intelligent and just can't come out of his shell.

ER: I feel like he's dealing with so many pressures that instead of dealing with each one, he just doesn't deal with any at all. I think that can be taken as something that it's not, when really life is just too much. You remove yourself from it completely as opposed to fixing what you can. I think sometimes that's mistaken as a [disorder], when really it's just people not wanting to apply themselves or not being able to cope with a situation.

Have you ever felt like that?

ER: I have felt like that. When I was homeschooled, I fell so behind -- months behind at school -- because I'm not good at keeping up. And so I had to sit down for literally three weeks to a month and just do all of it. And it was not fun, and I didn't want to do it, but I had to. I totally relate.

What do you two make of the title change of this film from Homework to The Art of Getting By?

ER: I still call the movie Homework, just because I lived with that title for so long. But I think this movie isn't just for teens, and Homework made it sound like it was just for people in school. So I like The Art of Getting By because it speaks to a bigger audience. And I think adults will like this movie. There's an audience that is out of school that will see this and feel very nostalgic and appreciate it for the story that it is -- appreciate it because they were there, too, once.

FH: Yeah, I prefer The Art of Getting By. Homework refers to him trying to sort out his life at home as much as it refers to everything going on at school. But without having seen the film, its hard to get that impression.

[Photo credits: Don Flood (top) and Mark Schafer (page 2)/Fox Searchlight]

Pages: 1 2