There aren't a lot of films about adolescents or quote-unquote coming-of-age films that are realistic nowadays.
My favorite movies are movies that I go in and I leave deeply affected. Whether I laugh really hard or whether I cry really hard, I just want to feel really affected in that moment.
I'm always like 'I'm too skinny, I can't gain weight, even when I try.' I'd like to try to not let that get to me.
For me, my rule in this industry is I've got to listen to my butterflies. So if I got butterflies, then those are the scripts I go after.
I love arguing. I always say that I'll never win a physical battle, but I can always win a mental battle. I mean, not really, because I never really argue with anyone.
To be honest, I never went to school for acting, and I never learned to break down a script. I took acting classes my whole life, but they never taught me anything about acting. They just taught me about myself.
I like to think of myself as a fairly educated human being, but I'm a very uneducated actor when it comes to movies, directors, producers, actors for that matter.
When I started acting, my parents gave me three rules: I had to stay good in school, stay the kid they always knew I was, and I had to have fun. If I wasn't doing those three things, then I couldn't do acting anymore.
I think every teenager goes through their angst. People who are like, 'No, I had a perfect adolescence,' make me wonder how that is possible.
A quarter of my life has been spent on 'Secret Life.' I'm 20 and I've been doing it for five years, so I think the best moments have been when all the cast members get to work together and we get to collaborate and share experiences. We all grew up together.
I think the most important thing in life is self-love, because if you don't have self-love, and respect for everything about your own body, your own soul, your own capsule, then how can you have an authentic relationship with anyone else?
For me acting is a passion and an art, and always will only be that. I don't have any rules when it comes to acting. I'll do anything. But it depends on the script. Either I'll have passion for the project or I won't. It's got to fuel me.
Acting is fun and I refuse to get involved in the semantics and the politics of strategy and breaking out of something or doing something because you need to do something else. For me it's all about what fuels my soul and if I'm passionate about a screenplay then that's what I'll do next.
I went to public school my whole life, graduated high school with my class. Growing up, I'd go to an audition, my friends would go to soccer practice and we'd all reconvene and hang out in our neighborhood. When I would book something, I would never tell my friends. Acting was just fun. I was a kid, I wasn't jaded.
Alcohol is a big part of high school. I went through my little phase. I don't know one high schooler that doesn't.
There's been times when I've had heartbreaking moments and I'm like, 'I can't believe you said that,' or 'I can't believe you did that'. And it hurts, it still hurts, and it'll always hurt, but I've never had somebody that I truly cared about just walk out on me, whether it was a boyfriend, or an aunt, mom or dad.
I think you get the most honest performances when an actor shows up to set with their lines memorized. That's a very important thing that a lot of people seem to forget. You have a pre-conceived notion of what you want the scene to be, but once you get there, that goes out the window and it turns out to be a way that you never imagined.