She’s Ben’s girl too

Bouncy. Bouncy.

Nine-year-old Raquel Castro is acting a lot like Tigger this afternoon. She’s bouncing up and down on a fancy chair, jumping up and down on the bed in her Beverly Hills hotel room. All at once, spinning, Raquel begins dancing and singing “It’s a Hard Knock Life” from “Annie.” And then moves all the hotel room furniture out of the way so she can do a cartwheel.

“Sit down. You are making me nervous,” says mother Kathy.

Raquel, who was named after Raquel Welch, her mother’s favorite actress -- “she sent my mom an autograph picture” -- plays the winsome 7-year-old daughter of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in Kevin Smith’s (“Clerks,” “Chasing Amy”) comedy-drama “Jersey Girl,” which opened Friday.

Though she has no scenes with Lopez -- J. Lo is killed off in the first 15 minutes -- Raquel was thrilled to meet Affleck’s then-fiancee. “I want to be just like her,” says the petite, precocious fourth-grader, dressed entirely in pink. Raquel has been a huge fan of Lopez since she saw “Selena” when she was 3.

“It was really cool to meet her. She told me how to dance.”

“Her ideal version of the picture,” says Smith, “would have been that Ben died in the first 15 minutes. And she spends the whole movie with Jennifer.”

“He’s a nice person. He was very sweet to me. He was, like, a very fun dad. I felt like I had two dads.”

Raquel breaks out into a wide grin. “I have a crush on Ben,” she declares, but Affleck doesn’t know her true feelings.

She acknowledges that there’s a huge age difference. “When I’m 18, he’ll probably be 45,” Raquel says. “He won’t be as cute. He’ll have wrinkles.”

Getting the right Gertie

Smith looked at probably 80 girls on the East and West Coasts for the right Gertie. He was immediately drawn to Raquel’s picture “because she looked so much like Jennifer. We said bring her in and hopefully she can act. She came in and had a real natural delivery, the kind of delivery we were hoping we would find. I just didn’t want to have a cloying, movie-cute kid -- one of those irritating movie children you want to put through a window. I wanted someone who sounded like a 7-year-old.

Raquel hails from Long Island, N.Y. Her dad, Albee, is a singer-songwriter, and mom Kathy is an actress-songwriter. Before “Jersey Girl,” Raquel had appeared on HBO’s children’s series, “A Little Curious,” several episodes of “Sesame Street” and NBC’s “Third Watch.”

She has an older brother and sister and a younger brother, David, who also is an actor. She is the proud owner of two ferrets, Mia and Chia, and would love to own a Yorkshire terrier.

Raquel, who does quite good impressions of Britney Spears and says “The Apprentice” is her favorite TV series, doesn’t feel as if she’s missing out on her childhood.

“I usually get to play with my friends a lot, and I still hang out with them over the weekend,” says Raquel, who has studied karate for almost four years. “We have sleepovers.”

She also casts her friends in horror movies she makes. “I love horror movies,” Raquel says, giggling. She learned how to direct from observing Smith. “I listened and focused,” she says. “I want to be like him.”