All American Girl

Styling by Zoe Joeright for Artists by Timothy Priano; Hair and Makeup by Caroline Wiseman. On Abigail: Little Marc Jacobs Blandine Dress, Chan Luu Amazonite Facteted Stone Bracelet (available at chanluu.com), Gold Heart Drop Earrings from Jennifer Kaufman (available at jenniferkaufman.com)

A blond girl dressed in an old-fashioned pink nightgown descends a wide staircase in a quiet house. She casually looks around, turns down the hallway and enters a bedroom, where her mother is sleeping. The child snuggles in beside her, closes her eyes and gently falls asleep. …

“CUT!”

The youngster gets up and listens to a voice off-camera: “Abby, remember: You’re scared, you’re alone. You’re looking to see if someone is there.”

“Okay. Got it,” she says. She descends the staircase again, only this time with a look of fear in her eyes that sets us on edge, even as we sit behind a temporary wall, staring at a crappy TV monitor.

Shadowing Abigail Breslin on the Toronto set of her latest film, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Mystery, isn’t all tea parties and pillow fights. She is every bit the hard-working actress: focused, patient, confidently changing the tenor of her performance on a dime to comply with a note from director Patricia Rozema. That this is her first starring role in a major release doesn’t seem to faze her. It’s hard to believe this is the same sweet, silly kid from the 2006 indie hit Little Miss Sunshine.