She’s never taken an umbrella to a camerarman. But Miley Cyrus has gotten an extreme haircut. And that’s just one thing this singer has in common with Britney Spears, as Cyrus gushes over her famous friend in a new interview with Huffington Post UK. “Everyone goes through a time in their life where they don’t want their picture taken everyday,” the 20-year-old said of Spears . “She just never had that time where she could say, ‘I’m going through something right now and need to shut down.’ I also don’t have that, so it’s good to have that one person in my life who gets it.” In what way has Britney been a role model for Miley? Explains the latter: “I just think it’s never blaming you or making you feel like ‘you’ve got all this going for you,’ it’s like she knows. Sometimes life just steps in the middle of your career the way life always does for anyone – it’s just ours is a little more 24/7.” Miley has been more outspoken than usual this week. She espoused the use of marijuana . She outlined her views on gay marriage . In June, Spears Tweeted at Cyrus: “Loving your new video for #WeCantStop! Maybe you can teach me how to twerk sometime LOL.” Miley then replied with excitement: “We could twerk it out in exchange for u teaching me da moves 2 ‘slave for you’ (I’ve been practicing for the past 10 years.”
Lindsay Lohan is out of rehab , having just wrapped up her latest 90-day, court-ordered stint in which she split time between two California facilities. But the hard part has just begun, a judge warned. The judge who sent her into rehab for violating probation by lying to cops ordered her to attend therapy three times a week for the next 16 months. He made the decision hours after she left rehab. In a letter to the judge, Cliffside Malibu confirmed that Lindsay Lohan had “successfully completed her court-ordered course of treatment at the center.” However, it is “critical” she continue treatment. The facility says without three, 50-minute sessions per week required by the court (with attendance verified), she is “set up for almost certain failure.” Cliffside Malibu’s founder suggests the sessions “should be done face to face while she is in town, and via Skype or phone if she is out of town.” Lindsay Lohan has been in rehab at least six times and told Piers Morgan as recently as May that she felt it was all a big joke and waste of time. “Constantly sending me to rehab is pointless,” she claimed. “The first few times I was court-ordered to rehab it was like a joke, like killing time.” Cliffside says she didn’t treat it like one while she was there, though, reiterating, “We couldn’t be happier with the progress Ms. Lohan has made.” What LiLo does next is on her, and reports that she’s making a ” cut list ” of people to remove from her social circles is clearly a great first step. It’s hard to get any worse than it’s gotten in the last five years, right? What do you think, THGers? Can Lindsay Lohan stay clean? Yes, she’s totally learned her lesson by now! No, she’s in denial, spineless, weak and surrounded by enablers! View Poll »
Hi my name is Sabina, I’m 18 years old and I live in Poland. I met my idol on March 25th 2013. I’ve supported Justin for 4 years. I’ve always dreamed to go to his concert and see him live. I lost hope but never gave up and kept believing to the end. One day I was sitting on Twitter and tweeting Justin. Suddenly people started to write “JUSTIN BIEBER IN POLAND!” I could not believe it and thought it was a joke, but then I heard on the radio that Justin was actually coming. My heart stopped, I started cry and was so happy that finally this day had come. I had two months to prepare for the concert. My friend and I wanted to meet Justin so badly. Unfortunately we could not buy a meet and greet and started to cry, but did not give up and fought to the end. We took part in all the contests to meet Justin. One day a friend called me on Skype and said through her tears, “SABINA! We did it! We won and we’re meeting Justin!” I could not stop crying. The concert was scheduled for March 25 2013, but we went the day before. As we reached the place, we went straight to Justin’s hotel. At the hotel we met Justin’s dancers, Kenny, and Dan Kanter. The next morning we started our preparation. We went to the arena to get our meet and greet bracelets and there was already so many people there. We stood in line, and security led us to the place where the meet and greets would be taking place. We could not stop crying for a few minutes that this was actually happening. We waited for an hour, and time was passing by quickly when Justin arrived. Finally our turn came. We entered the room and I could not believe my eyes. Justin Bieber and I were face to face. The only thing I could tell him was, “I love you.” We took the photo, and went to our seats after that. During the concert I loved when Justin shouted, “WHAT’S UP POLAND?” He sang “Catching Feelings” and at one point he looked me straight in the eyes, which made me automatically start crying. For half the show, tears were streaming down my cheeks. The concert was amazing and Justin promised to come back to Poland! I have to make sure I go to the next concert, and to have a chance to see him again. Justin taught us to believe and never say never. Thank you so much, I love you Justin -@Sabinkax3 View post: Hi my name is Sabina, I’m 18 years old and I live in…
I had been trying to win a contest to meet Justin since I knew he was touring in the UK for the Believe tour. I never won any, but I also sent in my entry for BieberFever. The competition winners were announced 24 hours before the concert and I’d been checking my emails all day, hoping for an email saying I’d won, but there was nothing. My best friend and I were on Skype freaking out over the fact that the next day we’d be seeing Justin live again. I was on my phone at the same time and I saw that I had 4 new emails, expecting them to be spam or something. I went to delete them all when I saw I had an email from BieberFever. I didn’t even open the email before I started to freak out, crying and screaming. My friend was asking me what was wrong but I couldn’t talk. I went screaming down the stairs to my mum. I had to ask her to read it to me to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I even made her pinch me. I woke my dad up with my screaming and I even got a text off my neighbour asking what was going on. I called my friend and explained that I’d won meet and greet to meet Justin! As I live 3 hours away from Manchester, we had to get there earlier and organize a plan. I was awake the whole night, pacing my room and just thinking about what was going to happen. The next morning, 21st February 2013, my best friend arrived at 8 a.m. and we got ready together. We even made Justin a poster/letter, explaining how we’d been here from the beginning, and that he’s the reason we became best friends back in 2009. We set off to Manchester at about 11-ish, and arrived around 2. We went over to the box office window and we asked when we could collect our wristbands. We made friends with loads of girls while we were waiting. While we were waiting in line, Kenny came walking past the window so everyone came running. We got our tickets scanned and we were through, but sadly Kenny had gone by now. In the meet & greet queue we got told that we had to be in groups of 6 for the photo. We’d made friends with a few of the girls and we asked Lydia and Maisie to come with us, so we needed two more people and there was this young girl with her mum. I was so nervous at this point, like I was about to meet my idol? We got downstairs and we had to queue again, but I really needed to pee, like I hadn’t peed all day. In the queue we were deciding who was going to stand where, and like it was only fair the the ones who won the meet and greet got to stand next to Justin. We were then all moved into the same room as Justin, THE SAME FREAKING ROOM. He was literally just behind the curtain. It was so hard trying not to cry. I was first and I was like about to have a panic attack, the security put their arm in front of me and told me to calm down. I pushed through and got to Justin’s side and he was like, “Woah calm down” and put his arm around me. Alfredo was by the camera guy and I was looking up at him smiling and then I realized the photo was taken. I kept repeating, “I love you” to Justin and he was like, “I love you too” and I hugged him. I even grabbed onto his hand. He hugged and told everyone else he loved them and then we were pushed out by security. After that we all broke down, and sobbing. Then we went into the arena, and we had really good seats. We were on the floor and considering we weren’t VIP, they were really good. We had an amazing time at the concert and before we knew it, it was all over! I live in a really small town where news travels fast, and a few days later I was asked to do an interview with my local newspaper about meeting Justin , it was great! It just shows that if you never give up, it will happen. I never ever thought I’d meet him. If you’re reading this, I wish you all the luck and I hope you meet him one day, I know you will! -@bieberninjah Continued here: I had been trying to win a contest to meet Justin since I knew…
My name’s Ashley and I NEVER thought I would be writing a “My Bieber Experience.” This is how it all happened: It was May 2012 when the Believe Tour tickets first went on sale. I was sitting in 2nd period class that day and I got Justin’s tweet sent to my phone, saying something like “BELIEVE tour tix go on sale today!!” I hoped and prayed that I would somehow get tickets because I haven’t seen Justin since December 2010. My friend’s mom texted me saying, “Couldn’t get Believe tour tix….they sold out in first 30 seconds. I’ll keep trying, don’t get your hopes up, promise.” As soon as I read that, I started tearing up in class. I knew going to the Believe Tour wouldn’t happen. A few radio stations were giving away tickets a couple weeks later and I tried to call so many times but never got through. Then my friend Lauren (the girl i had met Justin with) texted me after school one day and said “DUDE GET ON SKYPE, I HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO TELL YOU.” I got so confused, I didn’t know what was going on. I got on Skype and I was so nervous, I thought it was going to be some kind of bad news. It turns out my friend’s mom had actually got us meet and greet VIP tickets for the Believe Tour , but she didn’t want me to know. I literally fell on the floor, laid there and started bawling my eyes out. I didn’t believe it was going to happen until January 23rd 2013 arrived. Finally the day came when we met Justin. We got our meet and greet bracelets and went to wait in line. When I was waiting, my heart was beating SO fast. It was almost time. We went downstairs to the bottom of the arena, and finally arrived in a room. While we were waiting there was a raffle ticket game. It turns out my friend’s mom had BOTH of the lucky tickets and we won a PIECE OF JUSTIN’S OLD DRUM SET AND A PIECE OF HIS OLD BACK DROP! They were also signed by him as well! Then everyone started screaming. The curtains were moving and Justin was in the building. Then it was our turn to meet Justin. We walked through the curtain, I couldn’t believe it. He was real, he was right there, right in front of my face. We walked up to him and I was like, “Oh my goodness, Hi Justin!” He said, “Hey love!” We got our picture together and then we had to leave. Before the bodyguards could push me away I yelled to Justin, “You’re the reason why we’re best friends!” (as I pointed to Lauren) His face lit up SO big and he had the biggest smile on his face. He said, “Aw!! That’s so awesome!! Thank you!!” My heart dropped to the ground. After we met him, I just stood there and cried and cried and cried. It happened. I finally met Justin and told him what I wanted to say. During the concert, we were in the front row and when Justin was singing ‘Baby’ he came right up to me and sang in my eyes for about 10 seconds! Trust me, I never thought I would meet Justin, but I believed and it happened. If you keep believing, you’ll meet Justin too. I promise. I’m the one of the left of Justin by the way! -Ashley Go here to see the original: My name’s Ashley and I NEVER thought I would be writing a…
Manti Te’o has spoken to a reporter for the first time in days and gone on the record: He played no role in Lennay Kekua and duping the public into believing he had a girlfriend who died of cancer. “I wasn’t faking it. I wasn’t part of this,” Te’o told ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap last night in a two-and-a-half hour, off-camera interview. The Notre Dame linebacker and NFL prospect even said he didn’t know for total certainty that Kekua was a fabrication until Wednesday night when Ronaiah Tuiasosopo called him and admitted to the hoax. “Two guys and a girl are responsible for the whole thing,” Te’o said. “According to Ronaiah, Ronaiah’s one.” Among other topics covered in the interview: Te’o admitted to lying to his father about having met Kekua; he never actually did. Yes, he did Skype with Kekua, but described the individual on the other end as being in a “black box,” unseen. Numerous personal meetings were set up and then canceled by Kekua. Te’o does take responsibility for the story spinning out of control, saying he “kind of tailored” it “to have people think that, ‘yeah, he met her before she passed away,’ so that people wouldn’t think that I was some crazy dude.” Te’o received a call from Lenny on December 6, claiming she had faked her own death to avoid drug dealers. He said he responded with anger and, yes, acknowledged her existence in a couple interviews afterward because he didn’t know “what to believe.” “All I knew for sure in my head was that she died on September 12.” Following the interview, Te’o showed Schaap Twitter direct messages from Tuiasosopo that were comprised of an apology for orchestrating the scheme.
Even dogs are using Skype to maintain long-distance relationships nowadays. In this fun viral video, a pair of canine pals communicate in a video chat … which soon turns somewhat heated for reasons we humans aren’t privy to. Seems like these two have some issues to hash out … Dogs on Skype Arguing over who sniffed who at the dog park this morning? Whether or not Congress should raise the debt ceiling? The NFC Championship Game spread? We may never know.
You’ll hear much of the movie stars and familiar faces that pop up again and again in Tom Tykwer and Lana and Andy Wachowski ‘s sprawling, ambitious Cloud Atlas , from Tom Hanks to Halle Berry to frequent Wachowski Starship performer Hugo Weaving. But the beating heart of the film belongs to Korean actress Doona Bae, who makes her English language debut as the luminous Sonmi-451, a genetically-engineered “fabricant” whose fierce humanity and love for a freedom fighter ( Jim Sturgess ) will change the future. Like Sonmi-451, Bae’s world opened up with an unexpected offer from a stranger. A successful model and actress in her native South Korea, she starred in Park Chan-Wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Boon Jong-Ho’s The Host — two of the most popular Korean crossover hits of the last decade, although the humble Bae is still surprised to hear that American audiences may have seen her work. Courted for the role of Sonmi-451 by the Wachowskis themselves, Bae won the part, then took a crash course in English to film her scenes. Bae’s Sonmi-451 (her name a nod to Fahrenheit 451 courtesy of author David Mitchell) inhabits the futuristic world of Neo Seoul circa 2144, where she’s broken out of capitalist enslavement by Hae-Joo Chang (Sturgess), a rebellion operative. Although the actress, like her castmates, portrays multiple characters through the film’s nested plots (including a pre-Civil War Caucasian belle with freckles and a hoop skirt), Bae commands the screen in one of the most transfixing performances of the year every time the film alights back on her ethereal Sonmi. Movieline spoke with the eloquent, soft-spoken Bae in Los Angeles about her journey with Cloud Atlas and the childhood dream of traveling stateside that she couldn’t follow then, but is living now. How did you first meet the Wachowskis and hear about the vision they and Tom Tykwer had for Cloud Atlas ? They just called me! It was weird because I had no American agent at the time, and I didn’t even have a manager in Korea. I was in between managers, so it was hard to find me. [Laughs] But I got a call from my Korean friend, the film director Pil-Sung Yim [ Doomsday Book ], and he said, “Doona, some famous Hollywood filmmakers want to send you a script – do you want to read it?” I said, “Yes, of course!” I got the script and I found, “Oh my god – this is Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer, this must be amazing.” After you got the script, what happened next? I did some auditions and sent in a self-taped recording – my older brother recorded it, and I just read the Sonmi part at home. Which scenes did you record? The scenes with the Archivist in the interrogation room, and one with Chang after I see the slaughterhouse. Two scenes. Then we met each other in Chicago and had camera tests. Then I got the part. [Laughs] It was like a dream. I’m still dreaming. Were you already interested in doing English-language films or attempting to find Hollywood movies to cross over with before Cloud Atlas came along? Actually, no. I wasn’t looking for any parts – if so, I would have learned English earlier. I think if so, I would have prepared. But I thought it might not be possible. Here, science fiction and foreign film fans have seen your work – Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and The Host in particular played well stateside – so it felt like it would make sense for you to make that move. Really? I haven’t thought about it. Actually, I wasn’t ready, I think – but I worked hard. I worked hard on the language. My favorite subject was English and I wanted to study English abroad when I was young, when I was a kid, but my mom said “No, it’s too dangerous to go abroad by yourself.” So I gave up. Now I’m learning English. I’ve been learning English in London for six months. Jim [Sturgess] says your English has improved quite impressively, and fast. Oh, thank you Jim! So sweet. Had the Wachowskis seen your film Air Doll ? Your character follows a slightly similar path to Sonmi’s. Yes! When I first met Lana and Andy on Skype, I was so curious about it. “How do you know me?” I asked. [Laughs] And Lana said, “We saw Air Doll and The Host and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance .” “Oh, Air Doll !” I see. There is some connection between the two characters. Sonmi has such a big arc – she changes so much, from being naïve and childlike at the beginning of her story to becoming such a powerful and intelligent woman. That’s exactly what I think of her, actually. I like Sonmi because she has both purity and innocence and at the same time she’s got such a strength. When you were playing her, did you feel a moment in her journey when you felt like she changed the most on her way to becoming who she would be? Actually I don’t study the script – I didn’t analyze anything, I just emptied myself and felt Sonmi, let her into my heart. So when I first saw Yoona-939 die, it was a big shock. It was like I realized something at that time. Also when I met Chang and saw the slaughterhouse – it was gradual. There are so many actors in this cast, but beyond Jim who you spent most of your time with, who did you bond with the most ? Ben [Whishaw] . We became good friends. We actually had no scenes with each other but personally we had a good time – and actually, I was very lonely because I went to Berlin by myself, on my own. I was lonely and a little bit depressed and stressed, and Ben was so sweet. He cheered me up. I’ve got some good energy from him. You recently starred in As One , a film about a Korean table tennis team. Did you ever challenge Susan Sarandon to a match? Oh, not yet! She’s got a ping pong club in New York City, I want to go there! I trained for six months with my left hand, so I can play ping pong with both hands. I should challenge her. I can beat her! Read more on Cloud Atlas , which opens Friday . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Because the Paranormal Activity movies are defined by their structure rather than by a visible monster or recurring lead characters or surroundings, it’s the filmmaking that ends up having to evolve and change to set each new installment apart rather than, say, the mythology. You’re got the limited location, the slow burn, the surveillance gear, the demonic hijinks — it’s what’s done with these elements that distinguishes one film from the next, a fact that makes the franchise interesting technically even if its versions of things that go bump in the night don’t do much for you. [ Read Movieline’s interview with Paranormal Activity producer Jason Blum ] I have to admit, they’ve managed to grow on me. The ingenuity required to work within the restraints of this dictated form of spookiness while coming up with new scares makes for some clever uses of space, timing and the way things are arranged in the frame. The original Paranormal Activity laid out the minimalist rules, while the second and weakest of the bunch upped the camera set-up to a full home security system. The third, which brought in Catfish directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman , jumped back to the late ’80s and older tech, including one ingenious bit of DIY on the part of the main character in which a camcorder mounted on the base of a rotating fan panned back and forth between the open kitchen and dining room of the haunted house. Joost and Schulman have returned for this fourth installment , which brings things closer to the present day and chooses for its weapons webcams, smartphones and an only mildly product placement-y Xbox Kinect. While, as in all of the installments, the filming doesn’t entirely make sense — there are inevitably scenes in which no rational person would continue holding up a camera — Paranormal Activity 4 ‘s killer shot is the surprisingly affective and familiar one of a person looking directly into a laptop while video chatting. Teenage Alex (the Taylor Momsen-esque Kathryn Newton) likes to shoot herself and her family with her phone and to Skype with her goofy boyfriend Ben (Matt Shively). Whether she’s leaning over it in bed or carrying it with her through the house while talking, her use of the built-in webcam represents a mundane but constant vulnerability — her attention is on the screen, but we’re aware of all the space behind her and the things happening in it. Alex and her six-year-old brother Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp) live in Henderson, Nevada. When something happens to the single mom who lives across the street, her creepy son Robbie (Brady Allen), who’s about Wyatt’s age, comes to stay with them until she’s out of the hospital. Their parents are going through a rocky patch in their marriage and are therefore too busy to pay much mind to the increasingly strange goings-on in the house following Robbie’s arrival, but Alex is very aware and gets Ben to rig up all the laptops to automatically record in her room, in Wyatt’s, in the kitchen and in the living room. And before you know it, “Night #1” is flashing on screen, things slowly start to go to hell and we begin to get hints at how what we’re seeing ties into the earlier films. Nothing that disturbing ever happens in the Paranormal Activity s, which is part of the franchise’s appeal — it crafts its frights out of its everyday suburban trappings, from doors creaking open or slamming shut by themselves to household items crashing down from places they shouldn’t be, or moving by themselves. The Kinect, while promising, does end up being a bit of a disappointment — the infra-red tracking dots illuminate the room and, inevitably, the occasional supernatural being within it when the lights are off, but the effect is more novel than creepy, like a demon-tracking disco ball. The film is heavily reliant on jump scares, but its best moments are the ones before them, when the tension builds without the benefit of escalating music to queue you in to the approaching shock. Instead, there’s that high-pitched sound, like a monitor left running, a fitting signal of trouble considering the way the technology used by the characters to document their lives so frequently outlives them. Many of the elements in Paranormal Activity 4 are familiar — the spooky children talking to the not-so-imaginary imaginary friend from Paranormal Activity 3 , the words on the door from Paranormal Activity 2 , and even Katie (Katie Featherston) from the original make an appearance. But while the film breaks no new ground, it does manage the giggly shocks that make this franchise so much fun to see with a rowdy midnight movie crowd. The fact that there’s so little space for an explanation for what’s happening — though we get more hints of witchy organizations and rituals here — has given the franchise an unexpected vitality. Who needs to delve into the stultifying details of who’s possessed by what and why? Like the diabolic force bedeviling the characters as they sleep, these things are better and more effective when left vague. Read more on Paranormal Activity 4 . Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Max Thieriot began his career opposite Twilight ‘s Kristen Stewart (in 2004’s Catch That Kid ), and this week he finds himself romancing Hunger Games ‘ Katniss Everdeen herself, Jennifer Lawrence — albeit against the advice of her mother, the neighborhood, their classmates and, perhaps, insidious forces that linger in secrets and shadows in The House at the End of the Street . In recent years the former child actor has navigated his way toward increasingly interesting projects (Atom Egoyan’s Chloe , Nick Cassavetes’ Yellow , the Toronto entry Disconnect , and the upcoming Bates Motel series on A&E) — and one thing that helped was making a conscious decision to live outside of Hollywood, as Thieriot told Movieline recently. The 23-year-old actor, who made his biggest recent mark starring in Wes Craven’s My Soul To Take , grew up in Northern California (where his family once owned the San Francisco Chronicle) and still lives there. “I always told myself that no matter what happened, how famous I became, I didn’t want to change the person that I am,” Thieriot explains. He spoke about the challenges of revealing just enough information to the audience in House at the End of The Street , if he really is in a genre phase right now, what he’s looking forward to in the Hitchcock-based Bates Motel , and the single best perk of growing up the scion of a newspaper family. You live in Northern California – tell me about the decision to stay there instead of Los Angeles. I moved to L.A. right after I finished high school, for three years, because everybody was telling me it was important to get down there, and then I kind of just decided for myself that I didn’t need to be there to be doing this. I wanted out of some of the chaos that comes with living here and being an actor. And I spend so much time away from home anyways, filming and stuff, that I might as well make home base somewhere I want to be. I grew up swearing that I’d never move to L.A. and yet here I am. L.A.’s fine! But I don’t know, I love Northern California. Jennifer Lawrence describes you as an unconventional actor type – you spend time in your trailer listening to country music, not really concerned with typical showbiz stuff. Do you feel like your approach to the industry is drastically different from the norm? I’d say so. Different from your typical actor, for sure. I don’t know – it’s just the way I was raised. As much as I appreciate acting and enjoy it, and like it, it wasn’t something where I grew up wanting to be a movie star. So when it happened I just took it as it came and always told myself that no matter what happened, how famous I became, whatever, I didn’t want to change the person that I am. That’s one of the reasons I still live in Northern California – it helps me stay grounded and to remember all those things. That must be all the more important given that you started acting so young. Exactly. But I definitely take it seriously. Well, Jen Lawrence also compared you to Paul Newman, so you must. [Laughs] I take it seriously, but at the same time I don’t let it get to me. You’ve got House at the End of the Street coming out but your last mainstream film was horror film, My Soul To Take . Next you’ve got Bates Motel . What’s behind this run of genre fare, and what do you feel like is pulling you toward this material? Honestly, I don’t even know. It’s funny, when I started acting I watched some horror films but I generally didn’t like the acting in them. I’d never thought about doing one, and then I did My Soul to Take and for that was like, well, if I’m going to do a horror film Wes Craven’s the guy to do it with. When this came along, to me it plays so much more as a thriller and not a horror film, and it’s a very different movie for the genre. The character was a character that I wanted to play, as opposed to just getting into this type of film. It’s tricky to talk about because we don’t want to spoil anything, but even as the story goes on the script reveals more and more to the audience. How tricky was that line to walk as a performer, conscious of what information is in the viewer’s mind at any time? It’s definitely hard to play because by the end of the film you hope that the audience goes, ok, and they look back at things that took place, or different expressions, and go, wow – got it! That’s why this happened. That’s why they made that face. It’s a tough line to walk as an actor to try and have that in scenes without giving away something. You know too much. You do. I know too much, but at the same time I want to show them something without having them notice that I’m showing it to them. It’s all about secrets, showing them a secret that they don’t even see until the end. You started your career with Catch That Kid , which was also one of Kristen Stewart’s first films. How did being a child actor influence your later choices? Well, Haley Joel Osment had some and Dakota Fanning had some roles that were very different and extremely challenging, but other than that the norm was these kind of normal sort of roles which to me weren’t that challenging. There wasn’t a whole lot of variety, you know? So once I got to an age where that started to change I made a decision to try and do a little bit of everything to not stay stuck in one category. How old were you when you were first conscious of trying to mix it up? 17 or 18. And since then it seems like I keep doing all this horror thriller genre stuff but that’s just the stuff that’s been in the public’s eye the most, because I’ve done like three movies that are waiting to come out that are all so different. In this Nick Cassavetes film Yellow I have a Southern accent in Oklahoma in the late ‘80s selling drugs and I have all these tattoos, and I put on a bunch of weight and got all buff, and in Foreverland I play a guy who has cystic fibrosis. Disconnect , which was just at Toronto and Venice, I play an internet webcam stripper, so I got buff and lost a bunch of weight and got all shredded for that, the way I felt an internet webcam stripper should look. [Laughs] I’ve really been trying to mix it up a lot since My Soul To Take. And we filmed House at the End of the Street two years ago, and since then I’ve done four movies or something. I only recently considered doing television and this last year I did a pilot for ABC for Roland Emmerich, so I’m open to that now and that’s how this Bates Motel thing came up. Alfred Hitchcock is so iconic in this business and in general and it seemed like a great opportunity to be a part of something that’s a 10 episode show, on A&E, for great producers, with Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore who are great actors. And yours is a new role we haven’t seen portrayed before – Norman Bates’ brother. It’s exciting too because as cool and fun and challenging as it is to play a character who’s never been played, it’s also fun to play something like this in such an iconic film now turned into a prequel to a TV show, because he’s unknown. You kind of know what you’re getting with Norma and Norman, but Dylan is this unknown guy thrown into the mix. Yeah, how messed up must that guy be? We know he doesn’t make it to the house later, but what happens in between? But honestly, this has all happened in the past few days, since like Friday. [Laughs] That’s when it all became official. I met with the team via Skype about a week ago, and we talked and all of a sudden the deal was happening. What was it like growing up with your family owning the San Francisco Chronicle, having such a history with institutions like that? It was interesting – I grew up actually hating the fact that my family owned the newspaper, because I was teased a lot at school as being the rich kid whose family owned the newspaper. It was hard because it wasn’t like the Press-Democrat, it was the San Francisco Chronicle. As a kid it seems people used to tease people over anything, and it seems like such a stupid thing to get upset, to get bummed out over something like that, but when you’re little it was like that. So I was happy when we sold the company. Like, great – now people aren’t going to give me shit. But it’s definitely something I appreciate and find to be fascinating, and obviously I’m just born into it, but I look at the history of it all and how it came to be. My great-great-grandfather started the paper in 1865 or something, and when the 1906 earthquake happened he separated himself from the Hearst family who owned the Examiner, and when the earthquake happened he was the only person to release a paper that day. He started it by literally typing it at home and selling it on the street corner. His last name was De Young and he had like four daughters so now there are no more De Youngs that are direct descendants from him… it’s interesting and kind of funny, and my family’s been doing stuff in San Francisco forever. It was also neat as a kid because the company sponsored the local sports teams, like the 49ers. I noticed from your Twitter feed that you’re a bit of a Niners fan. I’m obsessive about the Niners! One of my buddies from Sonoma County just got signed by them this year, so I’m like, yes – now I get to go to some games. That was probably my favorite part as a kid – we sponsored them, and the Giants, and the Golden State Warriors, so we always had company tickets and I took full advantage of that as a kid. There was a petition to get you cast in The Hunger Games as Finnick, which would have been a reunion with Jennifer Lawrence. How far did that actually get? They had specific people and they wouldn’t let others audition, so I didn’t get a chance to audition or anything. You’d think making out with Jen Lawrence for what seems like forever in House at the End of the Street would give you an edge of some sort. You’d think! I can shoot a bow better than anyone in that movie. But I’m over that now. I found a quote you gave in what must have been one of your first interviews, for Catch That Kid , in which you give the following sage advice: “Just be yourself and try not to be too over the top.” Nice. Does that still apply? Yeah! I think that’s still valid. Those are two very important pieces of advice for this industry. [Laughs] Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
