Equally cursed and blessed

After starring in Mermaids at the age of nine, alongside Cher and Winona Ryder, she stopped growing at 10 and has been 5ft 1in ever since.

But it hasn't stopped her from gaining roles in films as varied as The Ice Storm, Sleepy Hollow and, most recently, the Oscar-winning Monster, as the girlfriend of Charlize Theron's character.

She has acted with her good friend Johnny Depp on three separate occasions.

After having problems with an eating disorder in her late teens, she is now happily settled with actor/director Adam Goldberg and lives in New York.

Now she has turned her hand to the horror genre with werewolf tale Cursed, directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson.

Craven is the horror master behind A Nightmare On Elm Street and the film which launched the genre for a new generation, Scream, which he co-wrote with Williamson.

Q: What attracted you to the role of Ellie in Cursed?

A: I wanted to do something a bit lighter. I thought it would be fun to do a big horror film in LA for three months. I'd just been away for two months in Orlando and I thought it would be fun.

Q: What was it like working with Joshua Jackson (Pacey Witter in Dawson's Creek)?

A: He's really great. He's been working for as long as I have, so it's great to work with somebody where everything is as familiar to them as it is to you as you're just sort of both old hands at it.

Q: You've had such an amazing career - achieved so much from such a young age. How does it feel now to have worked with so many huge stars, and where do you feel you're at in your career?

A: I don't know. I mean I think I've had a great time so far. Yeah, I've had a chance to work with so many wonderful, talented people. I learned from the best - just working with such incredible talent like Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston - and I feel incredibly lucky.

I don't know where I am now. I guess now it's gonna be different. I guess it has sort of been changing. I suppose now I will have an adult career and I don't know what that is going to be like, especially because I just became an adult officially (laugh).

Q: Do you have any advice for younger stars like Lindsay Lohan? Any traps they can avoid?

A: I don't know. I think the kind of attention that's paid to those types of people these days is so much more intense than when I was their age and so I don't know how they deal with that. I would just say, never pick up a magazine. I mean, when I was a teenager, I would never - and still now I don't really like to - read any of the articles. So I feel like the best thing to do is to live your life as if these things weren't happening.

Q: Have you had a favourite co-star?

A: I think the best actor I've ever worked with is Giovanni Ribisi. He's an incredible actor. I mean, just what I would imagine Marlon Brando would be like. When I was a child, Anjelica Huston had a huge hand in giving me advice and hooked me up with the agent I have had forever now, for 14 years.

Q: Have you ever had any weird fan experiences?

A: I don't really know about most of them because I don't read the stuff. My mother keeps a file of crazy people who write more than once - she handles it.

Q: You've played a few dark crazy characters. Would you like to do a romantic comedy?

A: I've done a few romantic comedies. The last one I did was the Woody Allen film. I think that there are pieces that are more shocking that certainly stand out more, but they aren't really the majority of my career.

Q: There are a lot of children who star in commercials but don't get the break in movies.

A: When you're a kid you kind of audition for everything and they assume you don't have talent until you are an adult. They assume that if you can do one thing then you must be able to sing and dance too.

So you audition for everything and I just happened to get movies.

I applied to Columbia University when I was 18 and I got in, but I deferred for a year. It was just when acting was getting interesting for me and my career was getting really interesting, so I decided not to go.

Q: Horror films seems to be the biggest openers these days - with The Grudge, Boogeyman, etc. Was that a big pull for you in choosing the horror genre?

A: No. I think we started shooting this right after Monster, so that's before those films came out. The Ring had already come out before and it was really big. I just thought it would be fun. People make me aware of box office things but other than that I don't really pay attention.

Q: Do you ever feel any pressures to conform to what Hollywood wants?

A: I think in the past I've felt pressure to be a different person or change my personality, but I don't feel like that now. I feel like it's just too difficult and that people can tell when you are lying to them anyway.

Q: How do you choose the roles that you play?

A: Either it's a director I've always wanted to work with or a story I love or someone I've always wanted to play, it could be a location I've always wanted to go to, it could be a genre I've never worked in, timing - there are so many variables.