The members of the dysfunctional family at the center of City Island all have their secrets -- and for Vince (Andy Garcia), that means taking acting classes with Molly (Emily Mortimer). He auditions for a De Niro-Scorsese film, unbeknownst to his wife and children, and even manages to score a callback. This is something he can share only with Molly, leading his wife (Julianna Margulies) to conclude he's having an affair. Mortimer says it wasn't a stretch playing an aspiring actress who wishes she were in a Scorsese film -- even though she had just come from the set of one.

Q: Chloë Sevigny was originally cast as your character. How did you step in?

A: Andy Garcia and I were shooting The Pink Panther 2, in Paris, a scene right outside Notre Dame, and we got caught in a rainstorm, so we took shelter in a café. I immediately ordered a cognac, he lit up a cigar, and he told me about this film, for want of anything else to talk about. And he told me that there was this part that would be great for me but unfortunately someone else was doing it. It was a very clever tactic, because it whet my appetite to be taunted like that. So when the money didn't come together as quickly as they thought and the other actress got another job, as is the way with these things, he rung me up -- and this was a year later -- and said, "We're shooting this summer. I would love for you to do it." And so of course, by then, I was desperate to do it.

Q: Had you done Shutter Island already at this point? Because your character references Scorsese.

Green Zone takes us back to 2003, a time when the world believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In the film, that information is traced back to a single source, code name Magellan, who leaks the information to a journalist named Lawrie Dayne (played by Amy Ryan). The locations Magellan gives are searched by U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (played by Matt Damon) but come up empty. Ryan explains that her character represents every journalist who was duped, and how she'd like to be shocked instead.

Q: Now that you've played a journalist, do you look at members of the media any differently?

A: Well, right now I'm looking at your notepad! I had a little bit of a bigger one in the film that my character ended up not using. At least, it never made it into a scene. I mostly used it for doodles. The hard part was doing improvisation as a journalist. We had this one scene that didn't make it into the movie, and I was supposed to go in and ask questions, and I turned to [CBS news producer] Michael [Bronner], whom we had on set as an adviser, and I asked him, "What do I ask?" It's one thing to improvise feelings, emotions, but a vocation? That isn't so easy to do. But luckily Michael was there, and later on Rajiv Chandrasekaran [author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City], and I also talked on the phone to Anne Garrels about her book, Naked in Baghdad, which was set during the time the movie takes place.

Q: The thing that surprises me the most is that your character was able to get her stories printed, in The Wall Street Journal no less, without a second source.

With The Hurt Locker and Avatar out of the picture, Precious swept last night's Film Independent Spirit Awards, which honor the industry's independent films. The wrenching drama picked up the top prize for best feature, as well as four prizes for directing (Lee Daniels), acting (Mo'Nique and Gabourey Sidibe) and screenwriting (Geoffrey Fletcher). Jeff Bridges, as expected, won the best male actor award for Crazy Heart, while Woody Harrelson received recognition for his supporting role in The Messenger.

Despite its indie moniker, the Spirit Awards honored numerous films that have gone on to garner mainstream attention since their initial release. Many of the winners, including Precious, Crazy Heart and An Education will in fact be contenders at tomorrow night's Oscars. The Oscar polls closed earlier this week, though, so the outcome of the Spirit Awards have no bearing on tomorrow's ceremony. Read on for a full list of winners from the Spirit Awards site.

Brooklyn's Finest focuses on three cops: one who is about to retire (Richard Gere), one who is undercover (Don Cheadle), and one who is struggling to get by (Ethan Hawke). Each of them gets what he wants, with a twist. Perhaps the most tragic is Hawke's Sal, who is tempted daily by the large piles of money he finds during drug busts. He dreams of buying a new home for his pregnant wife and their ever-growing brood, but the only way he can afford one, he thinks, is by committing a crime. Hawke explains what motivates his character and what motivates him as an actor.

Q: What was it like to reteam with director Antoine Fuqua?

A: We set the bar kind of high for ourselves, with Training Day, because we had such a great collaboration on that. The older I get, the more I realize how rare it is to meet a kindred spirit, let alone to meet a director who knows what they're doing. It's a thrill to work for them, and we had a good time together.

Q: When you did Daybreakers, you called that a B-movie. Do you feel like Brooklyn's Finest could have been a B-movie as well, in the wrong hands?

The Hurt Locker gained another notch on its awards post on Saturday night, when the Cinema Audio Society awarded it the top prize for sound mixing (not to be confused with sound editing). Unlike last week's Motion Picture Sound Editors awards, which favored James Cameron's Avatar, the CAS favored Kathryn Bigelow's war film, over Avatar, District 9, Star Trek, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The Hurt Locker will be up against the same competition at the Oscars -- with the exception of District 9, which was overlooked, in favor of Inglourious Basterds.

Mad Men also picked up an award, for best sound mixing in a television series. Read on for a full list of winners.