Hailee Steinfeld’s bond with autobot Bumblebee is the highlight of the film but the actor says she found it hard to emote in front of the camera with her absent co-star.

Hailee Steinfeld’s bond with autobot Bumblebee is the highlight of the film but the actor says she found it hard to emote in front of the camera with her absent co-star.

All Steinfeld had was a “tennis ball and a stick” to respond to while enacting her scenes as Charlie Watson, a headstrong misfit teenager who eventually befriends the alien robot, B-127 and later renames him as Bumblebee.

Bumblebee was created through the help of visual effects.

“It was a very strange experience, unlike anything I’ve ever done- making a film where it feels like 90 per cent of it is with something that is not physically there. And the weirdest part was that it wasn’t like I was in front of a green screen and had nothing around me.

“I was in the real world with nothing to talk to. I haven’t really decided which might be harder or weirder but it was an interesting thing. Travis (Knight, the director) really got me through, helping me just really painting the picture in every moment,” she said in an exclusive video clip shared by Paramount Pictures with PTI in India.