Emmy winner Rosie O'Donnell plays a therapist in the poignant new Lifetime Original Movie "America," about a teenager caught up in the foster care system, and she tells ET's Kevin Frazier the extraordinary story behind finding the film's lead!

"We saw probably 200 kids for the lead role," the former "View" star explains. "We couldn't find him, because the boy needs to be vulnerable, fragile, wounded, broken and non-presentational."

With less than a week to go before the film was to start shooting, the title role was still not yet cast and executive producer Rosie went on a scouting trip to a local Detroit area foster care home. While dining at a small restaurant, she saw Philip Johnson, a 17-year-old student lunching with his family.

"He was sitting still, and he looked up, and he looked a little like Tiger Woods -- like you couldn't tell his ethnicity; he was a mixture, which is what America is supposed to be," she recalls. "And he had a soulful kind of stillness. He's a real kid, and that's what we needed."

Rosie approached him to ask if he had ever acted before. A true unknown who was thinking of getting into the field of engineering, Philip nailed every line reading in his audition and a short time later found himself in front of the cameras with the lead -- just a regular kid who happened to be at the right place at the right time.

"[It] was meant to be," says Rosie.

Based on E.R. Frank's book of the same name and premiering in February 2009, the film is about a sixteen-year-old boy named America who has spent his entire life shuffled through the foster care system. Emotionally vacant and suicidal, he's teamed up with Rosie's therapist, who helps him understand his troubled past in order to find the courage to live.

"It's a beautiful story, and one that doesn't get told often enough, about the plight of half a million kids in America," says Rosie.

Watch ET for more with Rosie on the set of "America"!