I love horror. I love 'The Shining,' 'Friday the 13th,' 'Halloween,' all those kinds of things. I love zombies, especially '28 Days Later' and '28 Weeks Later,' where the zombies are going faster than the George Romero ones. I love being scared; there's something that's awesome about your heart rate going up like that.

There's some things that you're passionate about as a director. You just know it has to be a certain way. The challenge is resolving those so everyone is happy and no one feels that they have not been heard.

I worked with creative people who were very demanding of me, and they helped me reach performances that I never could have gotten on my own without being pushed and having trust in them. And so I know the best way to get the best performance of an actor, and that's not to coddle them or to baby them. It's to help them; it's to push them.

My career was full of struggles and dreams, disappointments and peaks and valleys. But there was no Twitter, no Facebook or TMZ. Young actors could make mistakes and not become the focus of tabloids.

I didn't take the reins of my career until I was about 21, and I've been in charge since then.

There have been times I almost got a persecution complex. I felt like people wouldn't let me grow up. They always saw me as a smiling kid or goofy teenager, no matter how much I'd changed.

I asked Michael Jackson once. I said to him, 'How were you able to go from the Jackson Five to the biggest star in the world? What was your secret, Michael?' He said, 'Ricky, stay inspired. That's the hardest thing to do. If you can figure out a way to stay inspired, you can make it.'