Try to wrap your head around this: You have a starring role in arguably the best film this year -- if not years -- and you're all of 27 years old.

That's the startling reality actor Jesse Bradford is living currently, fresh off of director Clint Eastwood's and producer Steven Spielberg's incredibly powerful World War II epic, "Flags of our Fathers." It's the sort of life-changing event that begs the question: "Is it all downhill from here?"

"I can certainly identify with that thought, but by the same token, when I was 13 years old, I was fortunate enough to be the lead in a Stephen Soderbergh film ("King of the Hill"), so it's all relative," Bradford said in a recent @ The Movies interview.

"You have the ones that are going to go down in history as incredible movies and sometimes the ones that are a little less than that," Bradford added with an almost-guilty laugh. "Hopefully I can keep sliding back and fourth between the two, and have a couple more really meaningful gigs left in me."

New on DVD Tuesday (Paramount Home Entertainment), "Flags of our Fathers" is based on the bestselling book by James Bradley (with Ron Powers), the son of Iwo Jima flag-raiser John "Doc" Bradley. The film recalls February 1945, when one of the bloodiest battles in the war -- the battle with the Japanese on the island of Iwo Jima -- raged in the Pacific, and culminated with the raising of the American flag by five Marines and a Navy Corpsman on top of Mount Suribachi.

The iconic image was captured in a still photo by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, and overnight became a symbol of hope for a nation that's grown tired of the war effort.

But "Flags," unlike other WWII films that have preceded it, has a decidedly different wrinkle. With brutal and horrific scenes of the battle interspersed throughout, the film follows the three surviving flag raisers -- "Doc" Bradley (Ryan Phillippe), Rene Gagnon (Bradford) and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach) -- as they come back to the United States and are used as heroic props in the government's effort to raise billions of dollars on a war bond tour.

But there's an even-more troubling aspect of the men's newfound celebrity: They weren't the original flag-raisers, but three of the soldiers who were innocently recruited to raise a second pole in an effort to circumvent the Secretary of Navy's desire to keep the flag as souvenir. Almost serendipitously captured in the iconic shot by Rosenthal, it was a photograph that would embellish their heroic status, and ultimately haunt the trio for the rest of their lives.

"By virtue of being in this picture, they survived. Rene and Doc were able to come home and have families after the war, so it's a mixed blessing," Bradford said. "'Survivor's remorse' is the term that I think sums it up the best. Ira is the guy who dealt with it the most with it, Doc walked the line with it in the middle, and Rene was the most receptive, and the most willing to say, 'Hey, thank God I've been saved. For whatever reason I got plucked out and saved from God knows what fate.'"

However, Rene -- a Marine runner who carries the replacement flag up the mountain -- eventually finds himself in a difficult position. As the one soldier of the three who initially soaks up the spotlight upon his return home, some may look at his character's shallow actions as despicable.

"History has been the least kind to Rene out of all of the flag-raisers," Bradford said. "I felt that my most important job was to portray him in the most sympathetic light possible. I never felt that I had to fabricate anything to empathize and to get into his shoes and see what I think is the truth: That he was a young man, 19-20 years old, thrust into extraordinary circumstances -- from hell on earth to national superstardom."

The last thing Bradford wants is for audiences to hate Rene for his shallow actions.

"I thought it was my job to hopefully show you a guy that you won't look at and go, 'Oh, I'm not supposed to like this guy.' Hopefully, I can make people think, 'Anybody can make these mistakes.' I hope that people will see Rene as a character that people can learn from along the way as you watch him change," Bradford said.

Making His Day -- And Career
Doing "Flags of Our Fathers" gave Bradford (who previously starred in such films as "Bring it On" and "Swimfan") the chance of a lifetime to work with Eastwood. After getting over the wow factor that he was acting for The Man, Bradford, found the director's laid-back approach as inspiring.

"People have this image of him as this gun-wielding hard-a**, but he's just the most-mellow and low-key guy," Bradford said. "He has this calming energy that is just so infectious. He's easy to be around."

What Bradford loved most about working with Eastwood -- who has been long-regarded as a hands-off director -- was the trust the filmmaker put in his actors.

"He trusts his casting process and he trusts that if he hires you, you're the guy for the job and you're going to show up and bring 100 percent," Bradford said. "So to have that trust bestowed upon by such an icon, for me, it was confidence building."

And the biggest thing Bradford learned from working with Eastwood? Get it right the first time.

"Clint only does about one take per shot, and boy that will just light a fire under you’re a** as an actor," Bradford said, laughing. "I was used to doing 10 takes, at least. It certainly forces you to bring your A-game to the table and spending a lot of time the night before, looking at your scene and saying, 'All right, if I only get one shot at this, what is indispensable here? What in this page or two is absolutely critical? What is the crux of this scene and how can I make sure that I hit those notes in case I only get to do it once?'"

While his experience working with Eastwood was invaluable, the biggest thing that Bradford learned coming out of "Flags of Our Fathers" was an even greater respect for the veterans that he and his fellow cast members portrayed.

"You can pay lip-service all you want and say, 'Yeah, I respect the troops and all of the sacrifices they made,' but after an experience like this, you mean it when you say it," Bradford said, humbly. "When you try to empathize and step in their shoes and immerse yourself in their world and you learn as much as possible by reading a half-dozen books and watching documentaries -- seeing old-timers who were really there and just breaking down crying just at the thought of what they went through -- it changes that notion of respect into this palpable, tangible shiver that goes down your spine and really drives it home. It really makes you take pause."

In the end, Bradford said the experience was an essential part to his "personal development as a decent human being."

"I'm not trying to insinuate in any way, shape or form that I have the foggiest idea of what it's really like to go through what these soldiers did -- but just to try to understand it, changes your whole perspective," Bradford concluded. "You're never quite the same. Spielberg made a comment about that. He said, 'If you do a war film, it really does change you.' And it does."