By Rob Alarcon in New York City

Chris Evans is surrounded by the youngest A-list talent that Hollywood has to offer, but that doesn’t intimidate him the least bit.

He joins Erika Christensen and Scarlett Johansson in Paramount’s “The Perfect Score,” opening today in theaters everywhere. Chris plays as aspiring architect that has dreams of someday attending Cornell University. But when he fears that his S.A.T. score won’t get him into the Ivy League school, he joins a group of other teenagers to play a heist in retrieving the answers to the test.

In addition to “The Perfect Score,” Chris will also be starring in “Cellular” this year with Kim Basinger. He talks about these two projects in an interview conducted in New York City this year.

Q: What were your SAT scores?

CE: 1180.

Q: Did you have an unhealthy fear of the test?

CE: I kind of knew in high school that I wanted to act so pretty much my whole senior year was kind of a cake walk. I kind of knew that college probably wasn’t in the cards for me. So the SAT’s were kind of just a formality really.

Q: Having taken the SAT’s, did you relate to your role? IS that one reason why you did the film?

CE: I thought it was a great script and high school wasn’t that far away for me. We shot this two years ago, so it was really much closer. And I had seen all my friends go through the nightmare of the SAT and I have siblings who were going through it while we were shooting. So it was close enough to be able to relate.

Q: Was there anything about the character that was similar to you?

CE: Not much. I think the one thing is that we both kind of knew what we wanted at an early age. He’s by far more academic than I was, you know, a little more ambitious as far as schooling is concerned, but I think we both had a pretty clear idea about what we were after.

Q: Have you ever been confronted in your life with a situation where you really have to look at yourself and say to yourself, “Am I going to do the right thing?”

CE: I suppose. Probably not on the magnitude of as many laws as were broken in this film. I don’t think its ever been that serious. I suppose along the way in acting there are a lot of opportunities to do projects where the money might be right but if you’re really trying to have longevity and you don’t want to slap an expiration date on your career, you kind of have to say no when you really need that paycheck and it would be really nice just to work, but you know that if you do this there’s a chance you might get pigeonholed, or its really just a bad project and you don’t want to associate yourself with bad work. There have been times where you have to say, “All right, I have to say no,” even though it would really be nice to say yes.

Q: Can you talk about working with the cast?

CE: Sure. They’re great. Everyone’s so talented. I know Erika and Scarlett are sort of “on it” right now, but you give it time and every one of those guys is going to do really well in this business. They’re all really talented and it was just great working with them. When you’re on location you’re going to inevitably form friendships. You move as a group unit everywhere. So three months is a long time. It’s like summer camp.

Q: What’s your part in “Cellular”?

CE: Kim Basinger gets kidnapped in the beginning of the film and thrown into an attic. There’s a phone but the kidnappers smash it with a baseball bat. When they leave, she takes the guts of the phone and starts dicking around. Miraculously she gets it to work and gets a random phone call that comes to my cell phone. At first I think it’s like is this Susie, who is this? Eventually I buy it and it’s about me trying to save her throughout the film. It’s good.

Q: Was there any scene that was the most fun in particular?

CE: Anything with William H. Macy. That guy knows how to have a good time. He’s the type of guy who will be sitting with a group of people and there’ll be this dull moment just for a second, Bill will just kick out a joke, any time there is a dull moment in a conversation, “Guy walks into this bar”, and their all theses very smart jokes and half the time I wouldn’t know what he was talking about but I’d still be laughing saying, “Oh, Bill, you really crack me up!”

"The Perfect Score" opens in theaters today.