Good things come in small packages, and pint-size actress Abigail Breslin is no exception. Since breaking out on the big screen in M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs at the age of five, she also captivated audiences as Olive in the 2006 hit Little Miss Sunshine (which garnered her an Oscar nomination) and, most recently, tugged at our heartstrings in My Sister’s Keeper opposite Cameron Diaz.
This month the starlet tackles the horror-comedy genre in Zombieland, starring alongside Woody Harrelson and Emma Stone as the survivor of a zombie plague who takes refuge in an amusement park. Breslin celebrated her 13th birthday during filming and adopted a local shelter dog while on set in Georgia to mark the occasion (the pooch makes an appearance in the flick, too).
“I started to like horror movies during filming,” says Breslin, who counts The Haunting in Connecticut as one of her favorites. After battling zombies on set, are scary films any less frightening for Breslin? Hardly, she says: “My friends and I just had a horror-movie night where we watched a bunch of them. We were so scared we had to stand in the living room with the lights on for 10 minutes!”
With parents who keep her grounded with daily chores like cleaning her room and taking out the garbage, Breslin may actually avoid playing the role of out-of-control, young- Hollywood scenester in real life. How refreshing.
