Legend's Smith Goes To Dog - Page 1

Try again... 12:00 AM, 06-DECEMBER-07 Legend's Smith Goes To Dog Will Smith, who shares the screen in I Am Legend with a German shepherd, told reporters that he quickly bonded with the dog. "Abbey is the dog's real name," Smith said in a news conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., last week. "And, yeah, when I was probably 9 years old, I had a dog, Trixie, a white golden retriever, that got hit by a car. So ... I refused [to have one since then]. ... And then [trainer] Steve [Berens] brought that damn Abbey on the set." Abbey, a 3-year-old German shepherd rescued from an animal shelter, plays Sam, the constant companion to Smith's Robert Neville, the last man on Earth. "You say a smart dog? It's like, it got to the point with Abbey, she'd be playing, playing, playing, she'd hear 'Rolling!' and she'd run over to her mark and get ready," Smith said. "And I was like, 'What in the hell?' It's like she would know when I wasn't doing my lines right. If I would get lost in the scene, you know, she would just go [tilts his head]." To cement the bond between man and dog, director Francis Lawrence issued a directive: No one pets Abbey except Smith. (Though Smith's co-star, Brazilian actress Alice Braga, admitted that she snuck in a few scratches behind Lawrence's back.) "There was a rule on set that nobody could interact with her other than the trainer and Will," Lawrence said, adding: "Everybody was dying to pet her, because she was the most beautiful, friendly dog that I had ever seen, but nobody could touch her. Except Alice told me today that she touched her all the time. ... When she was finally wrapped, ... it was the one day that everybody could finally go and pet her, and she was very excited that she got all that attention from everybody that she had been dying for." At the end, Smith admitted that he wanted to take Abbey home. "It was the first time I had ... allowed myself to be fond of a dog since [Trixie], and I was like, ... 'Steve, please, Abbey has to live with me. Please.' And he was like, 'Well, this is how I make my living, man.' ... I experienced the pain again, because he was like, 'I'll bring her over every weekend, Will, but you know, she has to work.' It was painful, but, yeah, she was great." I Am Legend, based on Richard Matheson's novel of the same name, opens Dec. 14. --Patrick Lee, News Editor

I couldn't find anything else on the dog but she is trained by a company called Steve Berens Animal's of Distinction.

Can you tell I'm a film nut?

Cool article Birdy!  I still cant see the movie in the theater though, if the dog dies!!! 

Rozoan