CHAMPAIGN – After first reading Scottish director Bill Forsyth's script for "Housekeeping," actress Christine Lahti decided it was the best screenplay ever sent to her.

She was being considered for the lead of Sylvie – another actress who had been in the running was Diane Keaton. Lahti said she was told she might get the part if she and Forsyth got along.

"I just sucked up to him," the actress joked after the 1987 movie was shown Saturday evening at Roger Ebert's Film Festival at the Virginia Theatre.

Based on Pulitzer Prize-winner author Marilynne Robinson's novel, "Housekeeping," the movie is set in the mid-20th century Pacific Northwest, where two young orphan girls live with their grandmother in a rambling house after their mother commits suicide.

Their mother's sister, the free-spirited Sylvia, eventually arrives. She stays to take care of the girls, oblivious to the flood waters that invade their house at one point and the newspapers that she reads and then piles up, along with tin cans, around the house.

One of the girls, Lucille (Andrea Burchill) rebels against her aunt's eccentricities, withdraws from her sister and leaves to live with a home economics teacher.

The quiet and awkward Ruthie (Sara Walker) stays behind, and she and her aunt form a unique bond.

After the two spend a night on the lake, the conventional residents of the small town band together to take Sylvie to court to take Ruthie away to give her an "orderly" upbringing.

Forsyth said he recruited the two girls who played the sisters by visiting various schools. He settled immediately upon Walker as Ruthie but took longer to find someone to play Lucille.

Lahti called his casting perfect but noted the girls had never acted before.

"I did a lot of improvisation with them," she said.

"Christine should be given credit as co-director," Forsyth said. "She took a lot of responsibility for bringing them along."

"Well, thank you. I've been waiting 21 years to hear that," the actress said. Before Ebertfest, she and Forsyth hadn't seen each other since the film, set in Idaho, was shot in Nelson, British Columbia.

Like "Romance & Cigarettes," shown Sunday at Ebertfest, "Housekeeping" got lost in the shuffle after the leadership of the studio that would release it changed. "Columbia spent about 17 cents on promoting the film," said Forsyth. Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips, onstage with Forsyth and Lahti, said a film like "Housekeeping" needs someone who believes in it to usher it along.

Forsyth, the first Scottish director to develop an international reputation, gave up directing in 1991 and now concentrates on writing and producing. He still lives north of Glasgow.

Lahti, who looked stunning Saturday night, has had a 30-year career acting in theater, television and film and directing, picking up various awards along the way, among them a Golden Globe twice, the last time for her portrayal of Dr. Kathyrn Austin on "Chicago Hope."

Of all her work, she said she might be most proud of "Housekeeping." She said when she heard that Forsyth was directing "Gregory's Two Girls" (1991), the sequel to "Gregory's Girl," released in 1981, she wrote him a letter saying, "Let's do 'Housekeeping 2.'"

"You probably never got it," she said.