By Katie O’Keeffe

Look closely.

Try using binoculars. She plays the young mother hustling past with her child, the woman walking hand-in-hand with her boyfriend and the startled bystander watching a helicopter hover between two downtown buildings. There she is.

Former Kent State student Terra Harker worked as an extra in the movie “Enemy of the State,” starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman. She has since worked in various productions and joined the Screen Actor’s Guild.

Harker, 19 and a Kent native, portrays “just another face in the crowd” in five scenes of “Enemy.” But it was her first movie that inspired Harker to move to Los Angeles and get her foot in Hollywood’s door.

Attorney Robert Dean is the lead character, who gets framed for murder by a corrupt intelligence official in this action thriller released Nov. 25.

It’s Christmas time. Dean, played by actor Will Smith, is shopping in the streets of Washington. He stops in front of a lingerie store and is talking to his wife on a cell phone.

Enter Terra Harker. She’s playing a young mother with her son talking to Santa Claus

This is Harker’s favorite scene because it’s with Will Smith. She is only in the background, but it was enough.

“I was right up next to him. The first time we ran that, I bumped into him because the assistant director put me in a spot where I was too close to him,” Harker says. “The second time I was able to walk around him pretty easily.”

Harker never personally met Smith or Hackman, the big stars of the film, while they were in Washington. Hackman had already finished filming, so he was never there. As for Smith ... “I didn’t want to meet Will Smith because everywhere he went there was this screaming mass of people following him,” Harker said. “I didn’t want to be another face in the crowd.”

Some of Harker’s five scenes in “Enemy” might have survived the chopping block in the editing room. So she won’t miss any glimpses of her daughter, Cherie Cox says she will go to the theater prepared.

“I’m going to take my binoculars with me to make sure I see her,” Cox says. “We may need to use them.”

Harker and her sister, Natalie, who is also an extra in “Enemy,” heard about the acting opportunity through the family. Their father took them to the Washington set, where they worked for about two weeks.

“This is confusing,” says Harker, taking a deep breath. “My cousin Mike married Patty, and Patty’s cousin Sandé Alessi is a casting director for the movie.”

But as her father says, thus is the way of Hollywood.

“Hollywood is starting to be handed down from one generation to the next,” says David Harker. “If you don’t have those connections, it’s very difficult in this business.

“Terra was a little fortunate,” he says. “She had that going for her, besides her talent.”

Harker didn’t stop working when her time was up in front of the camera. She says she made more connections when she volunteered in the extras’ casting office. When she wasn’t networking with people in the casting office, she was mingling with crew members and other actors.

She walked around and talked to the workers behind the scenes. This also sparked in her an interest for film production.

“It was fascinating,” Harker says. “I got to see how everything works. Every movie, you basically create a whole new company. You have to hire [hundreds] of individual people.

“I kind of got special treatment,” she says. “I was basically allowed to go wherever I wanted while the filming was going on. I met the entire crew, pretty much.”

Harker met and mingled with some of the film’s stars, including Jason Lee, Ian Hart, Scott Caan, Jake Busey and Jamie Kennedy.

“This little boy comes running up to me and goes, ‘My uncle Jamie wants to meet you.’ So I was talking to Jamie Kennedy for about two minutes, and then I realized who he was,” Harker says. “I was so star struck, I was just babbling. I don’t even remember what I said.

“I cooled off and hung out with him later, and I was OK,” Harker says, still blushing.

She says that one, short-lived incident of star sickness was it during the two-week job. Harker didn’t flinch when she “hung out” with actor Jason Lee.

“I expected him [Lee] to be a little more carefree and outgoing, kind of like his character in ‘Mall Rats,’” she says. “One conversation between him, me and this British actor, Ian Hart, was about British politics.

“I’m just sitting there like, ‘hmmm,’” she says, nodding her head. “And Jason Lee was really interested.”

She is 5 feet 5 inches tall with chestnut brown hair and hazel eyes. Harker smiles as she’s talking to people. She looks like someone familiar, but it’s hard to put a finger on just who exactly: The actress on TV’s “Superman,” Terri Hatcher.

The nickname “Lois,” as she was dubbed high school, was a little annoying, Harker says.

“People tell her [she looks like Hatcher] a lot,” her mother says. “I think she looks a little like Terri Hatcher, Sandra Bullock and her father.”

Whoever she looks like, she is definitely her own person, her father says.

“She’s got her feet on the ground,” he says. “She knows what she wants in life. Terra’s always been the one who grabs the leads in the high school plays.”

It was always acting and singing for Harker, her sister says.

“The sciences and math and things like that never really interested her, ever,” Natalie Harker says. “Acting and singing are natural and they just come to her.”

Natalie, 15, has a favorite performance of her older sister’s.

It was when she sang “Touch Me,” taken from the “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” to the lead actor opposite her. “She stood on stage in her bra and underwear singing the song,” Natalie says, laughing. “It was hilarious.”

The two sisters, who say they are also close friends, have done small performances in the past. They sang and did a dance number to “Sisters” for community theater. But that was the last time they will probably perform together, Natalie says.

“Her acting is her business side, and my singing is my business side,” she says. “We have to keep things separate [because] we’re both making careers by performing.”

Acting isn’t Harker’s only love. She’s also interested in drawing and outdoor activities, such as white-water rafting, hiking and horseback riding.

Her interests coincide with her personality, her mother says.

“She’s a little bit of a daydreamer,” Cox says. “She can be moody. There will be a day when you’d think, ‘This is not a public person, she’s too quiet.’ That’s the artist in her, it’s the introspective side of Terra. But generally she is outgoing and exuberant.”

Yes, her sister agrees, she is a daydreamer.

“She’s just off thinking, and she’ll be like, ‘Oh, what was that? I’m sorry,’” Natalie says.

What does she daydream about?

“Los Angeles,” Natalie says with a smile.

Prior to working in “Enemy of the State,” she acted on stage in front of live audiences at Lake High School in Hartville, community and professional theaters.

Almost three years ago, she took to the stage of Lake High School for her first acting production as the character Bet in “Oliver,” based on Charles Dickens’ novel. After that, she was Nancy in “Oliver,” but this time it was for community theater, Theatre 8:15 in Green. She also sang in the chorus of “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Carousel Dinner Theater.

She was “stunning” as Nancy, said John Fohner, Harker’s high school choir and drama director for three years.

“Her presence on stage makes you care about the characters. That’s what you want people to do,” he says. “She commands attention, that certain something that you can’t define and you can’t teach.”

Fohner believes his former student has what it takes to make the switch to Hollywood.

“For her, you turn on the lights, and it’s all stage presence,” says Fohner, who has 13 years of teaching experience. “Terra sings, she dances, she acts, and she does these things well. I’m not sure what more you could want.”

Fohner says he couldn’t help but feel like a “mother hen” when he heard Harker was moving to Los Angeles.

“Teachers are surrogate parents in some ways, you know. You worry,” he says. “But the talent is there.”

Harker has lived in L.A. since May and has made “connections” that have helped land her other small roles in motion pictures and made-for-television movies and commercials.

Harker dressed up as Jackie Onasis for a prom scene in the film “Never Been Kissed,” starring Drew Barrymore and David Arquette. “Kissed” is due for release next year, as are most of the productions in which Harker has worked.

Others include “The Fight Club” with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton; “David and Lisa,” a TV movie of the week starring Oprah Winfrey, Lucas Haas and Sydney Poitier; and an episode of the TV show “To Have and to Hold,” starring Moira Kelly. She also may be in the sequel to “Austin Powers.”

Some of the plans Harker talks about include attending Santa Monica College in the summer. She had thought about getting degrees in film production and acting but now is considering a subject where she’ll learn about human nature, such as psychology or philosophy.

Skills for acting and film production can be learned on the set.

“But acting is my first love,” Harker says. “I’ve been singing my entire life. So I knew I wanted to perform in front of people.”

Harker says she gets a little nervous before a performance, but she never has stage fright.

“When I’m on stage, I build this imaginary wall between the audience and me, and it’s easy to get lost in my character,” she says.

But acting is not always as easy as it sounds. If you want to be an actress, “you have to be willing to make a fool out of yourself,” Harker says.

She says she loves the stage, but her small roles in “Enemy” have turned her on to film making.

“You get direct feedback from a live audience when you’re on stage, but filming is less stressful,” Harker says.

Showing a little reluctance, Harker says her lifetime goal is similar to many actors: Winning an Oscar.

“I feel bad saying it, though. I almost feel guilty,” she says. “I don’t want people to think that I think I’m better than everybody else, you know?”