
At first glance, Brit Marling seems to be just another Hollywood beauty. Typecasting her, though, would be a mistake. She not only stars in the heady, smart, independent sci-fi film Another Earth, she co-wrote it.

Plus, she's a bit of a philosopher.

"Everybody is trying to get at the source of 'Who are we and what are doing here?'" she told me when we talked in Washington, D.C. "Science goes at one angle. Religion, theology goes at another, philosophy at another and everyone's trying to arrive at the same place."

"And art is trying to take it all together," chimed in Mike Cahill, her co-writer and director.

In Another Earth, winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Marling plays Rhoda, a smart young woman whose lofty astrophysics dreams are shattered when she drunkenly crashes into a family sedan, killing the wife and children of John Burroughs (William Mapother). Rhoda emerges from prison with a deep sense of responsibility to help the man she devastated.

