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Heading up the cast of Catch and Release as Gray is Jennifer Garner. For firsttime director Susannah Grant, it was immediately clear that the role was in the right hands. “As soon as you hire an actor, the part is all theirs. You’ve done your job and now it belongs to them,” says Grant. “Jennifer created an entire backstory for Gray. She met all my hopes for the part – she’s so good, so funny, so moving; she worked so hard, yet you don’t see an ounce of the effort. Her performance is simply beautiful.”

“As an actress, Jennifer is able to make herself available emotionally and comedically – your heart breaks for her,” says Topping. “She has an incredible ability to make you both empathetic and sympathetic for her character as her world is opened up.”

According to Garner, before Gray can move on, she first has to come to terms with the man her fiancé really was – not the man she thought he was. “Bit by bit, she loses the idea of who he was – and she can’t even be mad at him, because he’s gone,” she says. “So even though she misses him terribly, she’s at sixes and sevens with herself over it.”

“Jennifer had a clear understanding of who Gray is from the get-go,” says Grant. “She does something invisible that holds the movie together: though all the other characters have their showy moments, it’s Jennifer’s performance – even when she’s being funny – that reminds you of why they’re all together.”

“I loved the idea that Gray was being taken care of by her fiancé’s best friends,” Garner says. “It’s just like real life: whenever I’ve been in a relationship, I’ve grown to love their friends so much – I’ve always loved being the girl among the guys.”

Indeed, because Catch and Release is as much about the people around Gray as it is about Gray herself, the filmmakers took care to make sure that each role was cast with just the right actor. “Casting is like getting married,” says Grant. “You’re not going to do it with someone who’s almost right.”

Just right for the role of Fritz, Grady’s playboy friend from childhood and keeper of his secrets, is Timothy Olyphant, who currently stars as Marshal Seth Bullock on HBO’s “Deadwood.” “I like complicated characters,” says the actor. “It’s always fun when you have a number of different angles. It frees you up to try different things from moment to moment.”

“Fritz shows up in Boulder – this small town – from L.A. and doesn’t fit in, but never leaves,” says Olyphant. “He consistently does the wrong thing, but seems oblivious to how others see him. Still, as Gray learns more about her fiancé, she learns more about Fritz as well.”

For the role of Sam, Gray’s sarcastic but lighthearted friend who earns his keep by compiling inspirational quotes for boxes of herbal tea, the filmmakers were struck by a creative suggestion. “One night in bed, I was kvetching about casting and my husband said, ‘Enough. Describe to me who you are looking for.’ So I went through a whole list and he said, ‘What about Kevin Smith?’ Kevin happens to be a friend of ours. I said, ‘I never thought of that. You’re absolutely right. It has to be Kevin.’”

When Topping approached him, Smith was taken aback. “One day, Jenno called me and asked if I’d be interested in acting in a movie. My first thought was, ‘Where’s Kutcher? Am I being punk’d?’”

Though Smith has appeared in six of his own movies (as the mostly mute Silent Bob) and in a handful of cameo performances, Catch and Release marks his first major role in a motion picture. “I fell in love with the part right away – it was like putting on a glove. I thought, ‘Oh, I can do this,’” he says. “I get to make all the jokes. Garner and Olyphant have to make out and look all sexy; I come in and crack wise. Suddenly, I’m a legitimate actor, not just one that doesn’t talk in his own movie.”

Grant couldn’t have been happier when Smith walked through the door. “We had seen many good actors and even gone to England in our search,” she remembers. “Then, Kevin auditioned and we called his agents immediately. Kevin didn’t even have a chance to make it all the way home before he had to turn his car around and drive back to our office.”

For the role of Dennis, the filmmakers were equally certain that they had found their man. “Sam Jaeger came in and I just knew he was the guy – no question about it,” says Grant. “I couldn’t quite figure out whether he was actually like the character or a really, really good actor. I finally realized that it was a bit of both.

There are elements of Dennis’ personality in Sam, but more importantly, he’s a terrific actor, incredibly subtle.”

“We fell in love with Sam instantly,” says Topping. “You don’t want to miss a second of his performance, because you think you’re going to miss some flicker of emotion. Also, his dry sense of humor is the perfect balance to Kevin Smith’s character – they’re the odd couple.”

Dennis’ approach is: “Pick up the pieces and keep moving in the hope that the hurt will pass,” says Jaeger. “It’s a testament to the nuances in Susannah’s writing that we perceive the differences in the characters and how they deal with Grady’s passing – the ways in which they connect and also the ways in which they don’t connect.”

The woman with whom Grady had an affair, Maureen, played by Juliette Lewis, is experiencing her own sense of loss. “There is no black and white in this story, no all out good and bad,” explains Lewis. “Maureen isn’t the bad girl or the mistress; she has a good heart. She’s a single mom who has to get up every morning and move forward because she has a child to raise.”

Grant says that Juliette Lewis was the first and only actor that came to mind when she began to think about who could bring Maureen to life. “I never write with individual actors in mind, but when I’d finished the script, I knew right away that Juliette was the only one who would be perfect for the part,” says the writerdirector. “She came in and read, and just like I thought she would be, she was perfect.

“Juliette is the most remarkable creative artist,” Grant continues. “She is completely focused and completely free at the same time – she finds that balance.”

“How great is Juliette Lewis?” enthuses Garner. “This is a character unlike any she’s played before, which is saying something, because she always plays such interesting roles. Juliette plays it with such heart. Maureen’s not there to get in anybody’s way; she’s there because she’s trying to do the right thing for her son and because, like everyone else, she misses Grady.”