LAUREN ASHLEY CARTER

In real life, I'm a large character, and I need the space and platform to be large.

Being on a low-budget film is difficult enough, and you may as well be working on something that you really believe in and you really love, and for me, that's to play different characters, to play different roles, and challenge myself.

I always tell people, 'If you say you don't like horror, it just means that you haven't found the right movie.'

'Hellraiser' was the first horror film I ever saw, so it will always be a favorite.

I try to keep myself busy creatively; it's for my own sanity after auditioning in the city for bad television shows and bad scripts and not being a name and having the clout to get my tapes passed on further.

I'm a huge Jackie Chan fan, and my boyfriend is Taiwanese, and he doesn't like to read. He had this Jackie Chan book, and I was asking him questions about him, and he didn't know, and I said, 'What do you mean you don't know? You have the Jackie Chan autobiography right there on the bookshelf!'

I've always said if you're comparing movies to music, then horror would be the black metal of the categories.

Sean Young is such a sweetheart and just absolutely lovely. From day one, she was just very easy to be around. She's definitely a 'mom' and very much a girl's girl. She likes talking about makeup and the business and just being a woman.

I grew up watching Sean Young films with my father; we've always been huge fans of hers. A surprising fact is that she loves to work on comedies, which was great for me to hear, because then I could ask her a million questions about 'Fatal Instinct,' which was a VHS I wore out from the video store.

I remember on 'Jug Face' working with Chad Crawford Kinkle, who is as sweet as they come. He told me someone had given him advice that if you're making a drama, you basically need to put your main protagonist through living hell in every scene, and then you'll have a successful film. He laughed it off until watching me every day!

There's a certain joy in taking a dramatic narrative and then adding that element of horror to it.

I'm a horror movie fan; I'm an avid fan and have been since I was five years old. My father and I watched horror movies, so this is a genre that is very close and very important to me.

There are awful things that happen, dreams get crushed, you build yourself back up again, and then there are, hopefully, incredible partners in misery that say, 'Let me help you. I've been there before.'

It's important to always do your best work, no matter what the film is.

When you're the good guy in a horror film, you're usually suffering a lot throughout the entire thing.

You always feel pressure to do your best, and when you know that the story revolves around you, it can become very overwhelming.

I did attend a convention with the production company behind 'The Woman' and 'Jug Face,' and I loved it and thought, 'I have to come back, as they are so much fun!' But those tickets are really expensive, and you're buying merchandise, and you want autographed pictures with people, so it's kind of like Disney World.

Whenever I write, I write very dialogue-heavy things because I love to force my characters to interact with one another.

I don't have much power to make many films, but I do have the power in what roles I choose.

For horror movies, it's great because I know exactly what I am doing and what should be done. But for a cop drama, I can't calm my face down, and so it's really nice to be able to be in this genre where nothing is too much, and no one yells at me for having big eyes.

'Pod' was a significantly larger crew with Ilium Pictures co-producing. 'Darling' was bare bones. We had less than half of the crew that we had for 'Pod.'

When I do theatre in New York, I typically only get cast in comedy.

I have to be vulnerable to allow myself to give the best performance I, and that doesn't stop in between takes, and it doesn't stop when I am finished for the night.

A little bit of neurosis is OK as a performer, but untethered, it can tear one apart.

I'll continue doing horror until the day I die. I love it; it's so much fun.