Movies: Zach Braff Has A Big Laugh

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Braff says he picked up storytelling from his father, a litigator who teaches at Rutgers University School of Law and did some local acting, and mom, a therapist. "We went out to dinner, and we never cared where we ate. My family was all about storytelling and making each other laugh," he says of his parents before their divorce. Braff's two elder brothers have also become writers. Joshua wrote a novel about Jersey, The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green, which will come out in September. And Adam was hired with Zach to co-write an adaptation of the kids' book Andrew Henry's Meadow, about a boy who escapes suburbia by building a Utopia in the trees. "We describe it as Brazil for kids," says Braff. It's hard not to suspect he really wants to call it Citizen Kane for kids.

The only time a tiny fissure appears in the immensely likable Braff's confidence is when he reveals, as he has in each interview about the film, that he had always pictured Portman for the role but never dreamed he could land her. After the phrase "someone like Natalie Portman" was mentioned for the hundredth time, a producer sent her agent the script as a long shot.

"Zach tells everyone he wrote the part for me, and he's so lying. The No. 1 clue is that my character is not a Jew," Portman says. "He's just saying it because I'm the one who agreed to do the movie. I have met other actresses who have told me they turned it down." The guy is so cocky, he even fakes modesty.