A STUDENT rubbed shoulders with Hollywood’s A-listers when she interviewed Steve Carell ahead of his new film.

Lily Sitzia, of Hove Park School (pictured inset), experienced her own cinematic close-up when she interviewed Steve Carell about his new film Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and the filmmakers of Song of the Sea at the BFI London Film Festival as part of her role as a junior reporter for education charity Into Film.

The 13-year-old, who is also part of her school’s film club, was invited to London to take part in back-to-back interviews for the two films which premiered at the 58th BFI London Film Festival.

Lily attended preview screenings of both films before coming face-to-face with Hollywood funnyman Steve Carell, whose credits include Despicable Me, Anchorman and Evan Almighty, to talk to him about the new Disney family comedy at the film’s press day. She got to quiz him about his bad days, got some tips on how to be funny on the big screen and even set him a bad day test.

Lily said: “I think the interview went really well. I really enjoyed it and Steve was really easy to talk to and when we did the prop scene, he was really good at it and he did everything I wanted him to do.

“I was a bit nervous to start off with but then as I realised he was really nice so it was really good.”

The teenager was then whisked off to London’s Leicester Square to report from the red carpet at the 58th BFI London Film Festival premiere of new animated film Song of the Sea. Joining seasoned reporters in the press line, Lily spoke with director Tomm Moore about his inspiration behind the animated tale from Ireland and the techniques involved in creating the film. On her first red carpet for Into Film, Lily said: “It was really fun meeting all the actors and actresses and asking them questions about how they felt about the film and it was really nice learning about how they did all the drawings for the background and how everything worked.

“It wasn’t like I expected because they sort of came to you one by one and I thought you just sort of had to catch them as they walked past but it was really good.”