By Ernio Hernandez
13 Nov 2006

Stage veteran Julie White — who currently stars on Broadway as a Hollywood agent in The Little Dog Laughed — will appear in the upcoming action film "Transformers" among a slew of other movie roles.

"Out of the blue, I get a really nice part in the big, honkin' summer blockbuster 'Transformers'!," White told Playbill.com. "I got in it and here's [director] Michael Bay who was so much fun to work with I can't tell you. I thought he would be like some kind of crazed, you know, megalomaniacal control freak and he is exactly the opposite."

White will play mom to the film's young, central star Shia LaBeouf.

Having trod the boards for a number of years, the experience of working on a big budget film proved quite different for the actress. She said, "...I got a couple of weeks of hanging out on the big movie set and even got to experience a special effect. This was so exciting! I'm a stage actress, I never get any special effects. You know how they put a big tennis ball on a pole and that's what you're supposed to be looking at [for the to-be-added computer-generated image of the character]..."

Recognizable to television audiences for her turns on "Six Feet Under," "Grace Under Fire" and "Desperate Housewives," the stage star reprises her Off-Broadway turn as voracious agent Diane in Douglas Carter Beane's comedy The Little Dog Laughed on Broadway. Her other stage work includes Bad Dates, Fiction, The Heidi Chronicles, Dinner With Friends, Barbra's Wedding, Spike Heels and The Family of Mann.

White also told Playbill.com about her other upcoming film ventures. "I have a fun little thing with Billy Bob Thornton coming out around Christmas [called] 'The Astronaut Farmer' and then something in George Clooney's movie 'Michael Clayton' which is a really smart, great movie. And then I got to do a film with my friend Laura Linney, 'The Nanny Diaries.'"