There's a reason that girls cut off all their Barbie doll's hair and dye it and do things like that. I destroyed my Barbie dolls, and I know other girls did as well. And that's kind of the way they see kids movies and child actors in kids movies, as something that you've moved on from. It's babyish.

I guess I was a philosophical child.

The best times I had on film sets were the times the director let me express myself, but those were rare.

If you can affect someone when they're young, you are in their heart forever.

I consider my relationship with acting in Hollywood as sort of a mutual breakup. Through puberty, Hollywood didn't really want me anymore, and I was like, 'Yeah, I don't really want you, either.'

I'm pretty cautious and not very athletic, so I've only had really dumb injuries, like sprained ankles and allergic reactions. I did have to go to the hospital after slicing my finger while trying to cut a Kaiser roll in half.

I watched the video [ with my first commercial] when I was 20, and in the video, there are two families. The first family is this smiling blond Partridge family, a Californian/Aryan kind of thing, all playing guitars, all singing together and harmonizing. And then, there's my family - and in my family, it starts with my mom saying that she feels like a drill sergeant sometimes, and she's yelling at one of my brothers to stop hitting another one of my brothers. It's just like, "Great, we're that family." It felt a little Simpsons versus Flanders.