BY EVAN HENERSON >LA.COM

They haven't seen much of each other since shooting "The Life Before Her Eyes" nearly three years ago, but Evan Rachel Wood can now check in with her "Life" castmate Eva Amurri, "say some weird, ridiculous joke, and she immediately gets it."

Sharing a dark movie about the effects of a high-school shooting can beget that kind of intimacy.

"We clicked pretty naturally," agrees Amurri. "By the end, we were confiding in each other on a significant number of things. It's nice to have that kind of a friend on the set, especially since there were not that many people in the film."

Wood, 20, and Amurri, 23, play unlikely best friends whose Columbine-like experience has significant repercussions on the life of Wood's adult character (played by Uma Thurman). Directed by Vadim Perelman ("House of Sand and Fog"), "The Life Before Her Eyes" is part friendship drama, part mystery.

Amurri's reserved and religious Maureen sharply contrasts with Wood's wild and free-spirited Diana. Both actresses - Amurri in particular - say that "Life" casts them somewhat against type.

Since making her debut at age 7 in "Bob Roberts," Amurri has appeared in "Dead Man Walking," "Anywhere But Here" and "The Banger Sisters" - all opposite her mother, actress Susan Sarandon. Her father is Italian director Franco Amurri.

She plays a rebellious Jewish girl at a Christian academy in "Saved!" and will go the vampire/werewolf route - complete with fangs and lots of blood - in the upcoming "Animals."

The three days spent shooting a critical bathroom scene with Wood in "The Life Before Her Eyes" was "the hardest thing I've done so far in my work," Amurri says.

"Just trying to get to that place and maintain it over that many days was pretty insane," she says. "We were shooting alternate endings as well, and it was difficult to switch in between those heightened realities."

Wood had been attached to "Life" since Perelman gave her the script after seeing the actress in her breakthrough role in "Thirteen" (2003). Perelman and Wood auditioned a huge number of candidates; Amurri was one of the last to audition.

"She walked in and just nailed it," Wood says of Amurri. "She has a great presence. She walks into a room, and she's one of those people that automatically has something about her."

The two actresses' first meeting after Amurri had been cast was, for Wood, equally memorable.

"I had just had my heart broken," recalls Wood, whose relationships have included actor Jamie Bell and her current boyfriend, rocker Marilyn Manson. "I walked in, shook her hand and said, `This should be a good bonding day. I need some ice cream. Let's go. Girl time.' "

Wood recalls being in "a very dreamy, reflective state" when shooting "Life" and of being aware of headlines detailing a spate of high-school shootings while the film was in production.

"The papers were quoting people who had survived it. It was like a scene from the movie," Wood says. "It's not just a film about an actual event. There's a bigger sense of loss about the characters, their lives and what was taken away from them."

Wood, who recently appeared in "Across the Universe," will star in films directed by Darren Aronofsky and Woody Allen in 2009. She has also been rumored to be a top choice to play Mary Jane Watson in a musical version of "Spider-Man," to be directed by "Universe" helmer Julie Taymor.

It's a project that Wood - who grew up on the set of the North Carolina-based Theatre in the Park, run by her father - finds intriguing.

"It probably won't be up and running for another year," Wood says of "Spider-Man."

"Broadway is such a big commitment that you have to make sure the scheduling and everything works out."

Evan Henerson (818) 713-3651

evan.henerson@dailynews.com