Worldly beyond his years

IT isn’t hard to get Josh Flitter, the exuberant 11-year-old who plays a streetwise golf caddie in “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” to talk -- about anything.

Like, why he loves living in central New Jersey:

“It’s a nice family place. I don’t like tornadoes and things like that and the worse thing we get in New Jersey is a bad thunderstorm. And I love snow.”

Or about his obsession with video games.

“My favorite is ‘Star Wars: Episode II Kingdom of the Old Republic.’ But I am looking forward to the ‘Jaws’ game. You are the shark ... you are Jaws and you grow up from a little shark and you eat fish and then you get bigger and bigger and then you eat people and boats.”

Though the diminutive Flitter has been acting in commercials, TV series and movies since he was 4, “The Greatest Game Ever Played” is his biggest project to date. The period drama chronicles one of the biggest upsets in sports: How a 20-year-old American caddie named Francis Ouimet (Shia LaBeouf) won the 1913 U.S. Open, beating former U.S. Open and six-time British Open champion Harry Vardon (Stephen Dillane). Flitter plays 10-year-old Eddie Lowery, a fast-talking kid from a poor family who not only becomes Ouimet’s caddie but the golfer’s confidant, friend and coach as well.

And Flitter steals every scene he’s in. “Easy peasy,” Eddie keeps telling Ouimet when the golfer agonizes at particularly difficult holes. And when he sees President Grover Cleveland at the Open, he yells out “Hello, Mr. President,” with the enthusiasm of a boxer puppy.

The real-life Eddie Lowery also picked up Ouimet’s bags when he was only 10. Mark Frost, who wrote the book upon which the movie is based (“The Greatest Game Ever Played,” published in 2002) and then adapted it for the movie screen, said that Lowery, one of six kids, was scrappy by nature. “His father had died the year before, the kid was left to his own devices and was street-smart in the original sense of the word.”

Flitter, relaxing in his hotel suite in Hollywood, a few days before the premiere of “Greatest Game” at the El Capitan, said his real-life counterpart “wasn’t really a bully. But if he needed something he’d go get it. Like now, if you don’t get something, that kind of stinks, but back then if you didn’t get something, you would go fight for it.”

Flitter says that it’s probably easier to play someone in a film who is “fake.”

“If you don’t do it the way someone is suppose to do it in the script, that’s OK in a way,” he says. “But a real person, if you don’t do it [the way they were], it’s like changing history. So it was harder than doing a fake person.”

After completing the film, he got to meet one of the late Lowery’s daughters and a few of his grandchildren. “He got divorced and remarried a couple of times. They gave me one of the best gifts I ever got. It was a picture. After they won the U.S. Open, they took a picture of the caddies and the guys, and Francis was up on their shoulders and Eddie was with the golf bag and he had a smirk on his face with a towel around him. It was one of the best gifts.”

Ouimet and Lowery remained friends throughout their lives. Said Frost: “[Lowery] was hugely important in the United States Golf Assn. and the development of amateur golf. They both had a great life and were devoted to each other.”

Flitter reports that he and LaBeouf also became friends during the production. “When we were off the set, we would play games. He was a real joker.”

LaBeouf even attended his 11th birthday party. “He came to the party and he hung out with all my friends. It was the coolest thing.”

Flitter also bonded with “Game” director Bill Paxton, because he didn’t treat him as a child but as a “grown-up actor.”

“He would always say to me that if you do something wrong, it’s OK. We have enough time to do it again.”

Throughout the interview, Flitter had been fiddling with his black-banded watch. Finally, he took it off: “This is the watch that David Blocker, he’s one of the producers, gave the main characters,” he said proudly as he handed over the timepiece. “It says on the back, ‘The Greatest Game Ever Played’ with ‘Thanks, David.’ ”

Flitter will next be seen opposite Martin Lawrence in “Big Momma’s House 2.” “I have a pretty big part in that,” he said, adding that he enjoyed working with Lawrence. “A couple of lines he couldn’t remember, so he made new ones and so did I!”