It was in January that “The Nativity Story” made its way to the top of a pile of scripts for Hardwicke to peruse. When she began reading, and realized the script was about the Nativity, she was skeptical.

“I remember thinking, This can’t be that interesting,” Hardwicke says in her slight Texas twang. “I mean, I’ve read this story a hundred times. [As a Presbyterian] I read the Bible backwards and forwards … I know it so well. But then I started getting so intrigued with the way Mike (Rich) had gotten right inside the story and right inside the heart and soul of these characters…. I just thought it was so fascinating and interesting, and just a huge challenge and totally scary, and that just made me want to do it!

“I do think that, you know, as an artist,” she adds, “you should try to do things that scare you in a way, that challenge you, that raise the bar, that make you work harder than you’ve ever worked before. That’s the way you can push yourself to try to do something better.”

Hardwicke’s credits back her up. Her last two directorial projects were “Thirteen,” a gritty film about a young girl’s relationship with her mother that Hardwicke says she felt called to create as “cinema-therapy” for family friends dealing with similar issues, and “Lords of Dogtown,” about young skateboarders growing up in a tough neighborhood in California. The Virgin Mary may seem a huge departure from tongue-pierced teens, but Hardwicke unites all three projects in terms of her interest in portraying characters in their adolescent years.

“The time when you’re a teenager is the time when almost everything extreme happens to you,” she explains. “Everything is changing in your system, and your life, and your body is changing, and so, that is one of the most volatile times that anybody’s got.… And, you know, a lot of the people that go to the movies are kids, so it’s something to reach out and give them an inspiring story.

In this film, it’s Mary who’s the teenager, the one with whom most young
viewers will seek to identify. Not to mention the one who has to be believable as the mother of God. So Hardwicke set out to find the girl who fit the proverbial slipper.

At 16, Keisha Castle- Hughes is a pretty average teenager. She listens to hip-hop music, likes Johnny Depp, and records her thoughts in a diary. But few young teens have been nominated alongside the likes of Holly Hunter and Renée Zellweger for an Academy Award. Castle-Hughes was only 11 when she was selected out of hundreds of schoolgirls in New Zealand to play the leading role in the film “Whale Rider.” Her moving performance as a young Polynesian girl won her the Academy nomination in 2004 as well as the respect of audiences and industry professionals — including Hardwicke. Though actresses from age 15 to 30 vied for the role of Mary in New York, Los Angeles, Rome, Paris, Morocco, and Tel Aviv, the curly-haired girl of 16 ultimately won out.