'NEW WORLD' This Pocahontas is for real

Q'orianka Kilcher is drawing rave reviews but is staying grounded.
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- Before "The New World," 15-year-old Q'orianka (Cor-ee-AHN-ka, which means "Golden Eagle" in Quechua) Kilcher's previous screen experience amounted to a brief stint on "Star Search" (she sings, too) and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it role in "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." But adjusting is what Q'orianka, part Quechua-Huachipaeri Indian, part Swiss-Alaskan, will have to do. In director Terrence Malick's much-acclaimed "New World" -- his fourth film in 32 years -- the home-schooled ninth-grader plays a sinuous Pocahontas to then-29-year-old Colin Farrell's grizzled John Smith. She even gets to kiss Farrell -- her first kiss.
Already, she's getting big buzz: Newsweek proclaims her "the new face of female stardom" and enthuses, "The casting of the unknown 14-year-old Kilcher proves a masterstroke."
Intoxicating praise guaranteed to make a teen-ager's head expand. Or maybe not: Her artist-activist mother stands by her side, needle in hand, ready to burst any swelling. Conceit isn't tolerated for long in the Kilcher household.
"Once she attempted to go a little Hollywood," Saskia Kilcher, 37, says, "and I said, 'No. I'm not here to help you have a six-wing mansion.'
"This is like a very thin line between magic and madness."
Bringing in activism
The key to navigating that line, mother and daughter have decided, is to inject a little social activism into the Hollywood proceedings. "Climb into the belly of the beast," Saskia says, "and change things from within." Be an actor with a cause.
She pulled up to the red carpet at the Los Angeles premiere of "The New World" in a hydrogen-fueled car and invited Indian tribal leaders to the big event. Last month she participated in a fund-raiser for the Pawnee Nation Academy, a college in rural Oklahoma, where she and "New World" cast member Brian Frejo are honorary spokespeople.
Kilcher also designs her own clothes and jewelry, and is working toward getting her own fashion line, called Generation Q. She'd like to contract with her less-fortunate cousins in Peru to do the work. Then there's her goal to create a music school in Peru (her father's native land), and a law school. Maybe she'll go to college. If she has time.
As for all the attention, she says, "I don't care about the attention." It matters only, she says, because "that gives you a bigger voice to try to bring about positive changes in the world."
Her background
She was born in Germany, the daughter of a backpacking human-rights activist and a Peruvian artist. From Germany, the family made it to Hawaii, where her younger brother, Kainoa, was born. Sometimes Q'orianka's dad was part of the picture, sometimes not.
In Hawaii, money was tight, so the family would hang out in the hotels, watching the entertainment. Q'orianka was mesmerized by the dancers and singers. Soon she was dancing and singing. By the time she was 9, she'd performed in more than 250 dance contests and local variety shows.
Just before her ninth birthday, the Kilchers landed in Los Angeles. "The last place I wanted to be was in LA," says her mother -- they were heading to Oklahoma so that Q'orianka could record a music demo, but their car broke down in Los Angeles. Saskia thought they'd be there a couple months at most, but her daughter was transfixed.
They struck a deal: Saskia would help with her career, so long as she used her talents to "empower her voice" and those of others.
Her mother hauled her around from audition to acting class in their beat-up car.
"My mom was so sweet, she would always do anything to get me to acting class," recalls Q'orianka. "She was always walking around very dirty because she was always under the car, being the mechanic. ... And all the moms were making fun of her and stuff because we are, of course, different and they have their fancy cars and stuff and here we are under the car."
Chance meeting
At one of those classes, her mother met Carlyne Grager, the woman who would become Q'orianka's agent. Soon, she'd signed Q'orianka to her Seattle-based agency. Q'orianka was 10 at the time.
"We didn't realize how big this was going to be," Saskia says. "Sometimes I want to put the brakes on things."
Ask her why she thinks she was tapped to play Pocahontas, and Q'orianka shrugs.
"I honestly don't know," she says.
Does she think she's good in the film?
Long silence.
"Mmmmmm," she says, choosing her words carefully, "I really don't like looking at myself like that."
And then she starts talking about the other actors in the film: Farrell; August Schellenberg, who plays Chief Powhatan, her father; Christian Bale, who plays her husband; Irene Bedard (who voiced Pocahontas in Disney's animated feature), who plays her mother.
Those guys, she says, now they're actors.
Getting the role
It was a given that the role of Pocahontas would go to an unknown, says the film's producer, Sarah Green: There were no "name" American Indian actresses to tap, beyond Bedard, who, at 38, was too old for the part. So for eight months, 13 casting directors fielded thousands of candidates from around the world. Beauty was a requisite, as was the ability to convey strong emotions with little dialogue. Someone who could play a young girl, and a wife and mother. And learn Algonquian. And speak in an English accent.
At 14, Q'orianka was much younger than they'd wanted. But the audition lasted nearly a month, with Q'orianka reading from the script, singing, playing an Indian flute. They asked her how she felt about speaking with an English accent. Q'orianka went home, listened to a tape, and came back the next day, speaking the Queen's English.
"What we'd discovered is she is mature far beyond her years," Green says. "She's traveled her whole life and has a worldview. We learned she has great drive and discipline. We learned she was kind of fearless."
Then, Green says, they finally turned the camera on her, and well, that was pretty much it.
"The camera loves her. She had this mystery that just drew you in. It was unmistakable."