"Well, she had to be between 12 and 13 at the beginning, but between 16 and 17 at the end—I mean one girl who could play both parts—and we did look at quite a few young girls, some of them very young indeed. It was amazing how many parents would write in, you know, from Montana and so on, saying: "My daughter really is Lolita!"—that sort of thing. But we looked at them all, and of course, Sue Lyon was just one of them—but the moment we saw her, we through 'My God, if this girl can act—because she had this wonderful, enigmatic, but alive quality of mystery, but was still very expressive. Everything she did, commonplace things, like handling objects or crossing a room, or just talking, were all done in a very engaging way...and, incidentally this is a quality which most great actors have, it's a strange sort of personal unique style that goes into everything they do—like when Albert Finney sits down in a chair and drinks a bottle of beer, and, well, it's just great and you think "God, I wish I could drink a bottle of beer like that," or the way Marlon, you know, pushes his sun-glasses on his forehead and just leaves them there instead of putting them in his pocket...and, well, they all have ways of doing everyday things that are interesting to watch. And she had this, Sue Lyon—but of course, we still didn't know whether she could act. Then we did some scenes, and finally shot a test with Mason, and that was it—she was great."