Casting director Mele Nagler scoured the world trying to find a boy who could believably portray 11-year-old Oskar Schell, the precocious protagonist in "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. Over the course of the film, Oskar goes through a complex, keenly felt journey, so Nagler and director Stephen Daldry knew they needed an actor who had just the right combination of razor-sharp intellect and emotional availability. "Oskar is smarter than most adults," says Nagler. "He's an astute observer of the world. At the same time, the character is going through a tremendous loss—a loss that even your emotionally evolved adult would have a hard time going through. How do you find a child who can access that?"At one point, Nagler recalls, she was getting audition tapes "by the truckload" from places as far-flung as Canada, England, and Australia. In addition to employing the usual casting.