The Salmon house, with its 1970s furnishings and telltale colors, bedroom shag carpeting and teen posters of David Cassidy, Snoopy and "Love Story," doubled as a time tunnel for actress Rose McIver.

"It's not a decade that I lived through, so obviously a lot of it was very novel for me," McIver, 21, said in a recent phone call about "The Lovely Bones." The New Zealander plays Lindsey Salmon, younger sister of 14-year-old Susie (Saoirse Ronan), who is murdered in 1973 in Norristown, Pa.

"The music was something that I enjoyed, and we listened to a lot of the music in preparation ... that was great as a way of slipping into it," McIver said in her soft Kiwi accent.

"The Salmon house was pretty much dressed and all ready for us. It was like stepping into a time warp, so we really were kind of thrust into this other decade."

The interior was built in a warehouse in Hatfield, Montgomery County, while the exterior was in Malvern, Chester County. The location manager found a pocket of 1950s-era houses where '70s touches such as siding, wide asbestos shingles and metal trash cans were added.

McIver, who made her film debut as a squirming 3-year-old in "The Piano" (the fidgeting was real because she had to use the restroom), just finished her second year at the University of Auckland, where she is studying linguistics and psychology.

But for "Lovely Bones," she had to play a girl who ages from 11 to about 19.

"Being able to have pigtails and fake freckles and hairpieces and braces," helped enormously. "Once those were all in place -- and a costume especially -- you could really slip into an age group outside yourself, and having that external definitely helped find the internal."

Although she didn't realize it at the time, McIver's real-life habit of keeping diaries provided her with valuable research.

"To see what was significant at different ages, the way I wrote and thought at those ages," proved a great resource. She also spent time at a Pennsylvania high school so she could touch base with 13-year-olds and did research into actual families suffering traumatic losses.

McIver had read the Alice Sebold novel, the basis for the movie, when she was 15 although her young co-star had not, so she worked from the script. They know the movie will attract both book club members whose copies are dog-eared and patrons who never heard of the novel.

"You're never going to make a film that pleases all of the fans," McIver said. "All we've made is our impression of the story. ... We hope it's true enough to the story, we feel like it is, that we translated the heart of the novel."

Although Susie's death and premature passage to heaven are at its center, the topic of the afterlife wasn't a constant between takes.

"Everybody on set had a variety of views when they started the project on what might happen, and I think that some of those have changed probably or developed, anyway, as well.

"We talked about them a bit on set, but it was a long shoot and it could be quite bleak subject matter if we were just concentrating [on that]. ... When we weren't shooting, we were having a laugh and enjoying each others' company and keeping spirits up."

But castmates had to turn off their obvious affection for Stanley Tucci once the cameras rolled. He plays George Harvey, the seemingly benign neighbor who makes dollhouses for a living and murdered Susie.

"When I first met him, I couldn't believe he was cast as Mr. Harvey. He's just incredibly friendly and personable and easy to spend time with, and we get along really well.

"So the challenge was making sure there was a distinct separation as soon as we were on screen, that we didn't love Mr. Harvey the way we love Stanley."

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