Of course I didn't have a boyfriend then. I didn't even have a camp boyfriend then [at age of 13].

People who meet me as an adult are often surprised that I'm alive and have never been in prison or rehab. Sometimes they're disappointed I'm not cooler.

I don't know if I'm always going to be acting. Maybe when I grow up, I will be a scriptwriter. I already have a few scripts in my head.

I didn't want to be a former child actor for the rest of my life, although in some ways I suppose I am. I am going to be that.

It definitely is something that can get frustrating, because you want to live life on your own terms, and it feels for a while like you can't. But I've come to understand that I got to have all these amazing experiences that other people don't have. So this is the trade-off.

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

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.