I watched horror movies way too young and one of my favorite horror movies was The Shining. Jack Nicholson's character in that just bore a hole in my brain, his weird, maniacal controlled stuff. Obviously Mara in Village of the Damned wasn't an alcoholic and didn't have emotional, crazy outbursts. She was very non-emotional. But it was that sort of evil that I was tapping into.

Hollywood is weird, man. The child-actor world is the weirdest. But somehow I survived.

I had some pretty weird fan mail growing up, sometimes from prison and wherever else. Nothing too intense. Some superfans that maybe went a little overboard with gifts and whatnot, expecting something other than what it could be with a kid. That's a little weird. But at the same time, it's like, "Hey, I'm getting free video games. I'm not going to return it if you sent it!" Thankfully we never felt unsafe.

When I was single and on Tinder, that was a good little "Hey, did you ever see this movie?" thing. I would never bring it up myself, but if they mentioned it, then cool, that could work for me. But then on the other hand, if they're like a superfan, that could be weird if that's all they're seeing. They think of you as that character more than who you actually are.

Now I'm taking some classes, I'm going to school for film, and I think I'm going to end up back in the industry in one capacity or another. I'm not sure where just yet. I kind of stepped away from it for a few years. I thought I was done with it. But I grew up in it. It's such a big part of my life.

In general, working on a horror movie is no different than working on any movie. Turn the camera around and there's 20, 30 people standing around, eating doughnuts, smoking cigarettes between takes, working, like any other set.

I was really lucky to have an opportunity to direct a horror anthology. It kind of fell into my lap before I was really prepared, which was nice, but I feel like I could've done a lot more in retrospect. So if I do direct again, I'm going to do my homework.