My parents are from the South - they were both born in Birmingham - so my dad saw R.E.M. really early on when they were playing college stuff in Athens. He had a bunch of their cassettes from the '80s, and when I was 8, 9, or 10, those were the sort of things that were around the cassette player in the living room.
Having that college experience and a social life that didn't revolve around Hollywood was absolutely crucial.
It's hard to act terrified when you have 200 crew members around you.
Actually, 'Die Hard' was the first movie I ever saw in the theater. When I was a newborn, my parents were going stir-crazy in the house, and they put me in the bassinet, and I slept through 'Die Hard' in the theater as an infant.
When you get lucky, as I did getting to work on a series of amazing films, one of the drawbacks career-wise is that the image of you at 10 or 12 or whatever is burned into people's minds for a long time.
My mom teaches sixth grade and also taught first grade at one point. She's into dressing up and costumes and designing her own curriculum that way. She stayed home for about eight years with me and my sister when we were young before going back to teaching, so we had a lot of time with her. She taught us to read really early.
When I was five, I went on my first audition. It was for a Pizza Hut commercial.
I'm going to try and model myself after Kurt Russell and Jodie Foster.
Kobe Bryant is my favorite basketball player. He takes risks. He goes for the shot. He isn't cautious with whatever he does.
That professionalism comes from what I've watched people do on the set. I'm just trying to be as respectful to the environment, as they have been. I think I still act like a kid. I just try to be as professional as I can.
A script like 'The Sixth Sense' is fun to read: It's so well-written, and you get a vivid sense of what's going to be onscreen.
With 'The Sixth Sense,' my dad and I discussed how this was not so much a horror story as a story about communication. I understudied with my dad, in a sense. It made a huge difference.
A film like 'The Sixth Sense' burns an image of who you are into people's minds.
