Completing the quartet of children is ten-year-old Georgie Henley in the role of Lucy Pevensie, the youngest Pevensie and also the most optimistic, openhearted and brave of them all, and whom Adamson considers one of the story's most important characters. "Lucy is the pure heart of the book. She's the one who first enters Narnia, the one who has to deal with the disbelief of her siblings, and the one who has to have the spunk and energy to still believe in herself," he says. "Georgie Henley was just that. I knew from the moment I saw her on tape that she was Lucy, she was just so believable in her very first audition."
Pippa Hall discovered Henley out of the blue on a visit to a school in Yorkshire. Despite having no acting experience, Henley had something much more important; she was an unusually intelligent, articulate and emotional child with a huge love of books. Later, she became a constant surprise on the set. "She was so original in her approach to the part that she made us see the dialogue in new ways, ways we hadn't even imagined before," comments producer Mark Johnson.
Like the other children, Georgie saw an immediate link between herself and her character. "Lucy is quite a lot like me in a way so it was very easy to slip into her character," she says. "Lucy's the youngest of the four Pevensies, and nobody takes her opinions seriously as the story begins. When she opens this wardrobe, she's in a new world and she feels as though her feelings mean something there."