I remember feeling enormous pressure because I didn't want to be Shirley Temple. Shirley Temple was Shirley Temple, and I didn't ever feel like I could live up to that.

I'm in my late 20s, and people are coming around to it again. I think they're realizing how much this stuff affects them. I think all the time about how much Judy Blume affected me, or Beverly Cleary. And I think that now some people are starting to come around and get more of an appreciation for [my stuff].

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 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.

For me [being a kid actor], it's a bit like when you see your mom's friends, and they're like, "I remember when you were this big. You'll always be that cute little kid to me." It's like that times a thousand. Well, times a couple thousand.

If I ever have children of my own, they will read Matilda. They will watch the movie. And you can bet they will see Matilda: The Musical.

My grades in high school were not very good. I was that kind of perfectionist that figured if you can't do it perfectly, why do it at all? So my grades weren't great, but I feel like, is there any other way that I could have gotten into NYU? I don't know. I think that it definitely worked in my favor in some ways.