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.

Whereas when I was a teenager, other teenagers didn't want anything to do with me. It was even like that in college to a degree. People of that age don't want anything to do with their childhood, because they had put away childish things, and they're trying to distance themselves.

I was such a nerd. It just wasn't something I would have wanted. And I didn't want to act like an adult.

People view child actors the same way that girls treat their Barbie dolls.

I don't have any plans to pursue film acting. It's not my thing anymore, if it ever was. Yes, I do still act sometimes. But when I do, it's with people I know and trust, people who respect me as a person and appreciate what I have to offer.

I didn't want to whisper and giggle about [puberty] anymore. I felt incredibly self-conscious. I felt like I was losing myself, and I was losing who I was. And that really scared me.

I thought I started acting at 5 or 6, it was really when they were interviewing real families for a toothpaste commercial. They interviewed our family.