"The Kids a Real Natural"

"People think I'm a big-shot movie star, and some of wr my friends have started to treat me differently. But I tell them I'm just like any other kid on the street. This hasn't changed me at all." It is easy to take fame when you're 80 or 8 1/2, which Justin Henry is now. And his four-month plunge into the glamorous world of big stars and big movies affected him about as much as a summer at camp. It was, he insists, "no big thing."

His trip to stardom began, though he did not know it at the time, about two years ago, when Kramer vs. Kramer scouts started looking at nonprofessionals to play the role of Billy, who is really the film's central character. They went to Justin's school in Rye, a suburb of New York City, to look around, and that night his principal called to say they wanted him to audition in Manhattan. "I wasn't so excited," he says, "but I went anyway. There were 200 of us in the first tryout. Mr. Benton called each of us in and asked questions like 'Do you have a sister?' and 'Do you like the movies?' It was fun."

One of the reasons Justin was chosen was because the interview made clear that he has a very good relationship with his real father, Cliff Henry, a portfolio manager for J.C. Penney. Another was that he had never acted before. Explains Director Robert Benton: "We didn't want anyone with bad habits." Still, after seeing the movie, audiences may be excused if they think he was born before the cameras, so true and so good is his performance.

When he was required to cry, Justin would go off and think of sad things, like the possibility of some injury to his dog Chipper, a golden retriever. Once, just before he was supposed to turn on the tears, he went into a dark room to prepare, just as he had seen Dustin Hoffman do.

After a while, Benton opened the door and asked if he was ready. Justin shook his head. "Forty grown men sat outside and waited," says Benton, "but then Justin came out a few minutes later and did it-- just like that. I was stunned at how much he'd learned without being told.

The kid's a real natural."

On the set, Justin was known as the "little director," because he was so curious about how and why things were being done. "I know all about wardrobes and what it's like to be a movie star, but the glamour isn't as good as it looks," he says with appropriate cynicism. "It can be very boring, you know. I don't think I'd like to act full time. There just isn't enough time to see your friends," His real ambition, he confesses, is to have a farm in Colorado with his friends Tom and Scott.

While he was making Kramer, Justin became especially fond of Hoffman. "He's funny," the boy says. "He's a real nice guy with a lot of things in him." Eventually the two became so close offscreen, as well as on, that the boy started demonstrating filial concern for Hoffman. In one of the film's strongest scenes, he cuts himself badly in a playground fall, and the frantic Hoffman runs to the hospital with him in his arms. When the shooting was finally finished, Hoffman threw himself onto the ground, panting in exhaustion from his labors. Justin took off his own jacket, neatly folded it, and solicitously put it under the actor's head as a pillow. Says Hoffman: "I'll never forget that."

One of Justin's particular prides is that to avoid confusing their first names, they would be called on the loudspeaker by their initials, J.H. and D.H. By the time the film was finished, Justin, who had never heard of Hoffman until a few months before, was able to mimic his walk, both hands stuck in the side pockets, as if for ballast. Another of Justin's prides is that his sister Tabbatha, 11, who had a tiny role as the daughter of one of Hoffman's friends, was edited out almost entirely. "She was soooo jealous," Justin says. "She started acting real weird."

Despite the fuss over Kramer, Justin is not thinking much about the movies these days, and his parents are not about to encourage him. He talks so well and takes everything so coolly, indeed, that it is sometimes hard to think of him as just a kid. But he is. One day someone on the set asked him what his favorite film was. "Jaws 2," said Justin. "Jaws 2?" asked the puzzled questioner. "What about Jaws?" Replied Justin: "Oh, that was before my time."

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