AnnaSophia Robb asked her mother to find her an agent when she turned 8. Professionals warned that breaking into acting would be a slow process, but she won her first commercial at age 9. Later that year she scored the lead role in Because of Winn-Dixie, the film adaptation of Kate DiCamillo's Newbery Honor book. The movie opens Friday.

"It's gone a lot quicker" than expected says the 11-year-old actress, who traveled from her Denver home to Dallas to promote the movie.

She also stars in Samantha: An American Girl Holiday, which aired on television last year, and will play Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, starring Johnny Depp, in July.

Because of Winn-Dixie resonated with her because, like her character, Opal, she longed for a dog. When Opal moves with her father, a preacher, to a small town in Florida, she doesn't know anyone. When she finds a dog racing around the Winn-Dixie supermarket, she claims it, names it Winn-Dixie, and makes him her best friend.

"The dog I had died that summer, before we shot the movie. He got run over and I was heartbroken," AnnaSophia says. The five dogs that alternated in the role of Winn-Dixie were a comfort to her, she says, petting one of them, her interview companion, Laiko, as she talks. "You can talk to them and say anything and they'll listen and they'll always love you."

She admits that she was a little afraid of the Winn-Dixie dogs at first, because they were much bigger than her own dog, a cocker spaniel and poodle mix, had been.

"But I just bonded with them," she says. "They like being cuddled and scratched."

"Roux was the name of our old dog," she says. "So we call my new one Bella Roux in her memory."

Laiko, a 7-year-old Picardy shepherd, came all the way from the Picardy region of France to play Winn-Dixie.

"There are only two or three Picardy shepherds in all of California," says senior trainer Dawn Barkan. "That's why we went to Europe."

The director wanted a Picardy shepherd because it looked like a mutt, she says. But it's a purebred dog, rare even in Europe, where the breed was developed to herd sheep and goats.

To get that unkempt look, the trainers used powder, mousse and gel.

Laiko didn't mind, Ms. Barkan says. As long as he got his liver treats and romped around with AnnaSophia, he was happy.

"He's a goof ball," she says. "He's just a silly dog."