Co-star has big things to say about Pitt

Was that Brad Pitt, or just a guy with a sock on his head? Only Taraji P. Henson knows for sure.

In "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," Henson is Queenie, a New Orleans retirement-home caretaker who, one night in 1918, discovers what appears to be an abandoned infant on her back porch. Queenie takes this tiny creature indoors, unwraps the blanket and beholds a gnarled old visage on a newborn's frame. As the years proceed, Benjamin Button gets bigger, naturally. But he also gets younger and stronger, most unnaturally.

Indeed, in this story about a man born old who ages backward -- the title character journeys from the end of World War I into the 21st century. For many of those decades, Queenie is there to nurture and advise, looking on proud and wise.

But that doesn't mean the actress was always in the same room with Pitt.

"The first time I worked with Brad as Brad, Brad's face on Brad's body, was when Benjamin comes back from the war," says Henson. "But prior to that they hired actors of various sizes -- three different actors -- to portray him younger. Well, older, actually."

These actors were of small stature. And they would wear what Henson describes as "something like a blue sock" over their heads, with a hole for the face to poke through. In post-production, the digitally rendered likeness of a geriatric Pitt, replete with a gamut of highly nuanced expressions, would be "painted" over the actors' faces.

"There would be a bunch of X's and O's on the blue cap," Henson says of the green-screen process, "so that they can later go in and digitalize Brad's face on it. And not just Brad's face. They had to put hair on, and you could see his pupils dilate. It's incredible what they did!"

Henson, 38, who hails from Washington, D.C., and now lives in Los Angeles, couldn't help but wax ecstatic about co-star Pitt.

"Of course he's talented, we know that," she says. "But I just so enjoyed getting to know him as a person, as a father, as a great humanitarian. ... He's just so real, and so down-to-Earth. And as an artist so giving, and so there for you -- and he doesn't have to be. I've heard horror stories about stars of that stature."

Henson's first name is the Swahili word for hope -- the P. is for Penda, which means love. A graduate of the drama program at Howard University in Washington, she's been working in TV and film since 1997. She credits John Singleton with her big break in movies, in the director's 2001 L.A. family drama "Baby Boy."

It was Henson's performance in 2005's "Hustle & Flow" -- as Shug, the pregnant prostitute opposite Terrence Howard's pimp -- that brought her to the attention of Benjamin Button's casting director, Laray Mayfield.

"I didn't think I had a chance at getting the role because it's a big-studio film with big names attached, and I just figured they're going to go for a big name," Henson said, about going for her audition. "But unbeknownst to me, Laray had seen -- two years prior to 'Ben Button' even being green-lit -- she had seen 'Hustle & Flow.' She was in the theater watching my performance and she called Fincher and she said, 'I found Queenie.'"