Mae Whitman endored close encounters with Earth-eating aliens while playing the daughter of the Prez in INDEPENDENCE DAY. Next, she gets to be George Clooney's daughter [even better] in ONE FINE DAY, while she shares the spotlight with the likes of Michelle Pfeiffer and 7-year-old Alex Linz [THE CABLE GUY & LOIS AND CLARK]. The animated 8-year-old is also a regular on the Tv series CHICAGO HOPE. Mae'll tell you all about her current projects but can't remember a thing about being Meg Ryan's daughter in WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN. Give her a break- She was only 4!

About the chicken commercial- your Mom was going for the role. Any hard feelings when you got the part and she didn't?

No. She was surprized though. Now she does voice-overs for cartoons. We just did a Superman cartoon together. I was young Lois Lane in a flashback when her pet monkey gets shot into space. In my favorite part, I said,"Why can't Lucy go into space?" Lucy was my little sister in the cartoon, and I wanted to send her into space instead of my monkey.

You've been so busy. Why did you decide to take on ONE FINE DAY?

When I did the screen test, I got ice cream. I think it was a sundae.

So, give us the scoop on Clooney.

He's a very good kidder and pulls pranks. Like in ONE FINE DAY they had this fake kitten that cost $7,000. Sometimes George would say, "Toss me that kitten," while people were watching. I would trow it too short, and it would land on the ground. People would be horrified because it looked real. It was really funny.

You THREW the kitten? Don't you like kittens?

I am a kitten lover! And one of the reasons I liked doing ONE FINE DAY was because they had lots of kittens. I got to carry little, tiny baby kittens all over New York.

Did you get to keep one?

No, I had to say goodbye to each and every one of them. But I have two cats- A.C. and Kramer. And I just got a pooch for the holidays!

That's awesome. So was working with Alex Linz as much fun as playing with kittens, or was he more like a pesky little brother?

Well, if he drank caffeinne, he would be able to walk up walls. We had fun and teased each other. I had no idea what a paramecium was, and he told me.

OK, Mae. So what exactly is a paramecium?

An amoebae. It's a little blob that only has one cell in its body. Alex told me that, and so we started calling each other "amoebae brain."

Sounds like a great relationship. Do you two still hang out together?

Well, my acting couch had this bright idea to take us to a Dodgers game. I was sitting with a pizza on my lap. And Alex had me so wound up, I stood up to cheer- and SPLAT all over my lap! Then Alex got a snow cone, and he was squeezing his cup so the ice would move up and down. He did it a little too hard, and it popped out- right on the people behind us. Luckily they just laughed.

So is he JUST a friend?

Yes! Boys are all weird. Every one of them is weird. Yuck!

Well, tell us about other leading men you know, like Will Smith from INDEPENDENCE DAY?

I didn't get to work with him too much. But the movie was amazing. I didn't know it was gonna be that big.

Were you scared of the aliens?

They were big and ugly- I thought thay were cool!

Well, Mae is hardly big nor ugly but I definitely think she's pretty cool.