Jeffrey Ballard lost a lot of weight for the role of Justin. The idea was to show that Justin was neglected by his parents, that he's always out with his friends drinking or smoking, that he's not eating healthy. Ballard even stopped sleeping just so that he could get into Justin mindset and being disoriented.
The scene where two police officers try to separate the sisters was competently improvised. The two stuntmen who played the officers told Abigail Breslin and Georgie Henley to do what they wanted and the two girls just went at it.
Georgie Henley admitted that she is terrible at riding a bike and for one scene she had to ride what she described as a "huge bike". She practiced up and down a road for 15 minutes before shooting the scene. Director Stan Brooks said in an interview that during one take he asked her to look back at her co-star Jeffrey Ballard as she rode away, which made her veer into a telephone pole.
Sandra Anderson: You know, now that she's gone, now that mom's gone, I guess from here on in, we're the only people we have to blame for our stupid, shitty lives. Now we will have to be by ourselves.
Sandra Anderson: You know Beth, you are just a junior, Okay? A little tiny caterpillar, who can't even begin to appreciate the magnitude of my butterflyness, Okay? You will some day.