Memory is a funny thing.

In 2004, 13-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes became the youngest best actress nominee in Oscar history for "Whale Rider." She walked the red carpet the year the final "Lord of the Rings" installment swept the ceremony and Charlize Theron won the top female acting prize.

"I remember it in third person. I remember it the same way other people remember it," the New Zealander said in a recent phone call from Los Angeles.

"I remember pictures in magazines, clips on television, but I don't really remember much actually being there myself," said Ms. Castle-Hughes, who will turn 20 later this month. However, she thinks it will remain the most surreal experience of her life.

"I grew up in a small country, for one, but I grew up in a very small town like a big family. All of a sudden, it was like I was being transported to another world, sitting with people that I saw on television. It was just the most insane, incredible evening of my life."

She does recall watching a videotape, in her hotel suite, in which Johnny Depp congratulated her and wished her a good night. She met him that evening but recalls, "I had this grand speech planned and then I couldn't say anything. I stood there like a gulping fish; it was kind of pathetic."

What 13-year-old wouldn't be dumbstruck by meeting Mr. Depp and her acting ability is anything but pathetic. In addition to starring in "Whale Rider" she had a cameo in "Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" as Queen of Naboo and played Mary in "The Nativity Story."

Ms. Castle-Hughes hasn't seen "Whale Rider" in a long time, but she probably doesn't have to, either.

"I got up to 52 times I watched it, in a row, at the theaters because we were doing the festival circuit and I didn't know you could leave," once the movie started. She thought she had to be polite and sit through the entire film, instead of slipping out once the lights dimmed, as others do.

Ms. Castle-Hughes is back on screen as a free-spirited teen in "Hey, Hey, It's Esther Blueburger," playing at 3:45 p.m. today at the SouthSide Works Cinema as part of the Jewish Israeli Film Festival. (Tickets, $5 to $9 depending on age, will be available at the door. Cash only.)

Ms. Castle-Hughes is Sunni, a girl being raised by a single mom (Toni Collette) who befriends Esther, a 13-year-old misfit portrayed by Danielle Catanzariti. Esther starts masquerading as an exchange student at Sunni's school and suddenly becomes a popular, cool and (sometimes) mean girl.

"I came on board with the project very early on. We shot it in 2006, and I came on board about 2003," when the bones of the story were the same but it was much darker.

"I related to what it felt like to be a 13-year-old girl and to feel like an outcast, despite all of my efforts not to, and the fact that by the time I was 13, I had a very different life than most 13-year-old girls as well," says Ms. Castle-Hughes, who had been just 11 when she made "Whale Rider."

New Zealanders can suffer from "tall poppy syndrome," she says, in which "the minute someone achieves something good, we all cut them down at the knees, and so it's never cool or accepted to achieve anything."

At school, she desperately wanted to feel normal, whatever that was, but she felt alone, and that was something she wanted to bring to the screen. The movie took so much time to make, though, she had graduated from that period of her life by the time shooting started.

Still, she says, "It's not easy being a 13-year-old girl anyway. You feel these emotions so intensely. It's sort of like your body's developing, your mind's changing, your emotions are changing, like everything around you is taking an absolute flip from what you've known for most of your life."

Director-writer Cathy Randall, a producer and a casting agent had traveled to every state capital across Australia and looked at thousands of teens for a girl to play Esther. They found Danielle at an open call in Adelaide.

"I remember when I first met Danielle, I knew, I totally knew. I was like, 'Yep, that's her,' " a girl who reveals herself on screen and is honest with her emotions. "Which is quite rare to find people who don't have any armor at all."

Speaking as a young woman and, now, mother to a 2-year-old named Felicity, Ms. Castle Hughes says, "It's important for girls to see themselves on screen, to be reminded that they exist in the world of media. Because it's such a powerful outlet -- film, television, advertising -- and they have huge effects.

"If little girls don't see themselves on screen, in a weird way and especially in this age and this generation, they don't feel like they're represented in the world."

"Hey, Hey ..." may also remind girls about an important lesson: "If they feel like they're an outcast at school, they can know that it's OK. And that it's just a time and it's just a period and that it will progress."

And it might drive home what teens are told about bullying, admittedly hard to remember when they're in the middle of it.

Ms. Castle-Hughes, who had traveled to Los Angeles without her daughter so she could house-hunt and audition, said the commute is getting longer the older Felicity gets. She's less likely to sleep from one end of the world to the other.

The young actress chooses work on what she calls a "passion basis" and likes "to tell good stories, they come in all genres, all forms, all mediums," although often with no ready production money attached.

The young actress, however, has no quibbles with what some might call the accelerated pace of her life. "I've had the amazing luxury of having time to grow up and having time to go away and to be home and to be a normal teenager, and I'm able to come back here," to L.A.

"And I feel ready. I feel like this is really what I want to do." She wasn't sure when she was 12 years old but says, "But now I do, now I know."

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