Odette Yustman Gets Creeped Out

Ever had a potato bug stuck in your bra? Been chased by a misbehaving, mask-wearing stunt dog? Nope? Well, gorgeous, dark-haired actress Odette Yustman (of Cloverfield) has! In the new spooky thriller The Unborn, she plays a college student who is haunted by a creepy demon child and whose hot boyfriend is a vampire (well not really but the boyfriend is played by Cam Gigandet who just enacted evil vamp James in Twilight.) Odette has also co-starred with "The Terminator" Arnold Schwarzenegger himself! As a kid, she was one of his tiny students in Kindergarten Cop.

We sat down in Beverly Hills to talk with Odette right before the holidays and felt very comfortable with what she was wearing; her own jeans and white eyelet shirt covered by a warm beige sweater jacket and...she was barefoot, explaining that her heels were "just too high so I took them off". We brought some holiday munchies and had put them on a table. Odette enters and spies them....

Odette: Ooooo. Moose munch and everything. This is a spiffy room.

TeenHollywood: I love your outfit... casual chic!

Odette: Yeah, this is mine. This is from my closet. Six in the morning, trying to grab something. This is what I pulled together.

TeenHollywood: Talk about choosing this project. Were you getting a lot of horror scripts after doing Cloverfield?

Odette: Here and there, yeah. I guess more so than anything else. I don't want to be stereotyped but I never say never so when I saw The Unborn script, I loved it so much and I was like 'it doesn't matter. I have to do this. This would be a great opportunity'.

TeenHollywood: What stood out about this script?

Odette: I think one of the main things was this isn't a remake. It's a horror film that's a new idea, a completely new concept, an original story and that really stood out to me. Also, nowadays, a don't think women have such great opportunities to play a character like this and to be able to carry a whole film yourself. She really is a tortured soul and she goes through so much throughout the movie. As an actress, you kind of look forward to those roles but it's a challenge. You have to know that you're going to be working all day long. You're gonna be in bad weather conditions. You can't complain. You can't get sick. I'm really grateful that I even get to do this.

TeenHollywood: What about working with Cam Gigandet? Did you hang out off set at all?

Odette: Yeah, absolutely. Cam was actually shooting Twilight before The Unborn and I was shooting another movie as well so we contacted each other through e-mail and through the phone so, while he was shooting and while I was shooting, we were doing that. And then, we he got to Chicago, we forced ourselves to hang out with each other, not that it was such a bad thing (she laughs). We would go out together. We would go to dinner, we would talk about the characters and we would rehearse just because we wanted a real relationship. And, when you get to know somebody, you know what to do in a scene to make them laugh, just certain things that work so much better if you know them.

TeenHollywood: And you and actress Meagan Good seem like real best friends...

Odette: Meagan and I got along well right from the moment that we met each other, it was really great. We had met probably two years before and we got along super well so when we both found out we were doing the movie together, we were like 'this is perfect. We don't even have to act.' So we didn't even need to rehearse together. It just kind of flowed naturally for us. Every time we see each other, we always hang out and we're really buddies off screen so, hopefully, that showed.

TeenHollywood: Awesome actor Gary Oldman of the Harry Potter films and more recently The Dark Knight is in this with you. Can you talk about working with him?

Odette: Absolutely. I was really nervous at first and, to tell you the truth, he couldn't have been better. He just took me under his wing and gave me great advice. Gary sat me down one day and he's like 'this is how you have to deal with the business. This is what you have to do'. He started telling me stories about The Professional and about Sean Penn. It was just like 'you're Gary Oldman! You call me by my first name. This is so weird!' And I learned so much. He's just so professional and just so 'on it'. It was great.

TeenHollywood: You are the subject of an exorcism in The Unborn as well. We heard that you watched exorcisms on You-Tube for research?

Odette: (laughs) Yeah, that's exactly how I did research. I figured I can go buy the books and do research that way but I really wanted something visual that I could see so that I could create my own idea of an exorcism. I'm like 'let's check it out'. 'Amateur videos, exorcisms', that's what I searched and I found really crazy things. It's really terrifying. You have people from all over the world. Some parents think their kids are possessed and take them into churches 'my kid is possessed. You need to do an exorcism' and some of the kids are terrified. I don't know if the parents are crazy or these kids are actually...you know, possessed or whatever.

TeenHollywood: What did these 'possessed' people do? Did it creep you out?

Odette: People react so many different ways. Some are screaming. Some are completely still. It's really scary and I watched it by myself at night. I was petrified! I couldn't sleep. It's the scariest thing because it gets in your head. Psychological thrillers really just terrify me. Like The Exorcist is absolutely my favorite horror film and I watched it when I was like seven years old with my mother for the first time. I don't know why my mom let me watch that. I couldn't go to the bathroom by myself. I couldn't go upstairs by myself. I couldn't sleep. It just got in my head and Linda Blair did an amazing job.

TeenHollywood: What other scary movies besides The Exorcist did you like?

Odette: Rosemary's Baby and there's this movie Dolls, I was petrified of that movie because I had porcelain dolls growing up in my bedroom so, after I saw that movie, I grabbed a hammer and took off their heads. My mom was like 'what are you doing? Those are expensive!' I'm like 'they have a brain. I know it!' She's like 'you are the weirdest kid ever'. I can't even look at a porcelain doll the same even now I was so scared. I was probably like eight or something. I just love scary movies. I love the thrill.

TeenHollywood: Well, this one is pretty creepy. How did you feel when your director David Goyer snuck up on you with the creepy device that holds your eye open?

Odette: Oh, my gosh. I was about to kill him. He said 'I have an idea for this scene. There's this thing. It's called a speculum and it kind of goes in your eye but you numb it so you're not gonna feel it and you only have to do it once'. I'm like 'okay but if I have to do it, then you have to do it'. He's like 'sure, no problem'. So, we do it and it's horrible and then he's yelling 'don't blink! Don't blink!' I'm like (scared voice) 'okay, okay'. And then, he's like 'wow, that looks really cool! I want a cross shot right here. I want a shot right here. I want another shot right here'. So we ended up doing it like six times and he didn't do it at all. It was horrible.

TeenHollywood: Were there contacts for the blue eyes or was that CGI?

Odette: Contacts. And, I've never worn contacts ever and I have super-sensitive eyes so 'how in the hell am I going to get through this?' I did it. I was like 'don't think, just do it. Don't complain'. Just like anything else, you just have to get used to it and I did. There were different stages of the color so certain ones didn't hurt as much as others but it was irritating after a while.

TeenHollywood: Okay, lets talk about more creepy things. We also hear that David didn't warn you about the bugs that would crawl all over you either?

Odette: No, not at all. The bugs, he was like 'there's potato bugs. I found one in my backyard. It's not really a big deal. They're harmless'. I'm like 'whatever'. So they showed me the potato bugs and they're huge. They're like this big (indicates about two inches long) and he was like 'so we're going to put some on you but they're fine'. And they're crawling up my shirt, going into my boobs, one caught onto my arm and started biting me.

TeenHollywood: Oh Jeez.... They bite?

Odette: Yeah, I said 'you told me they don't bite!' 'Well, I don't know!', he says. (laughter). Great, and they were eating each other. They're horrible bugs. There was a bug wrangler from South Africa I think. He couldn't have been sweeter but he was so serious about his bugs. He was losing them and one was caught on my arm, 'Ewwwww'. He's, 'it's okay. Don't harm them'. I don't care about the bug right now! But they have regulations. We had to do multiple shots of one on my hand, one crawling on me, a bunch on my whole body. We got really well-acquainted.

TeenHollywood: Okay, that would send me running but that's not all. How did you react when there was a real earthquake on the exorcism set? And did anything else weird happen?

Odette: So many different weird things happened; the lights would go on and off. There was an earthquake in Chicago. There was this picture that was taken of this guy doing down a stairwell and these hands grasping him. It was a crewmember a grip or something and they took a picture and you could see hands coming out. I was like 'what is going on here?' It was in that old insane asylum where we shot.

TeenHollywood: As an actress, how do you keep your energy up all day because this has got to be exhausting.

Odette: I feel like the lead actor kind of sets the tone for the whole movie and I think, even though you're so exhausted and you hardly ever get any sleep, it's still really important to come to set with a smile on your face and put everybody in a better mood because, if not, what are you working for? We're all here to have fun. We're not curing cancer, we're trying to entertain people. I want to embrace everybody and make everybody feel comfortable on set.

TeenHollywood: What was actually there on set for you to react to? Like were the dogs real or CGI?

Odette: There was a real dog. Her name was Mattie. She didn't listen at all. (laughter). It was like 'come on. Figure it out'. Literally, the dog wouldn't move or it would walk away or it would not do the right thing but it was a real dog. It was kind of scary when the mask would go on. They would put the mask on it and it was like 'what is going on?'

TeenHollywood: You've done some TV shows and now you're doing a lot more movies. Are you interested in doing another TV commitment or....

Odette: TV is really bittersweet for me because I had such a great experience shooting "October Road". It was like I had this great family and I have these mentors, the creators of the show, they just guide me with everything that I do now and, if it were the right character and if it was a great script, a great pilot, I would, of course, toy with the idea. And, especially if it was with the same creators of "October Road". I would do anything for them, of course.

TeenHollywood: What kinds of music are you into?

Odette: I love all sorts of music. I'm really into Damian Rice and Amos Lee. I love Jack Johnson and I also love the new T.I. and Rihanna song. Josh Radin, he's a great musician and Katy Perry is one of my dear friends so it's so cool having your friends do so well. I remember her sitting in my living room playing the acoustic guitar and just singing and now she's this huge music star and it's like 'Katy, are you kidding me?'

TeenHollywood: That's so cool! I was looking at your IMDB listing and found two credits that were very odd; on Transformers it said 'socialite' and on Walk Hard it said 'reefer girl'.

Odette: (laughs) Yeah. That's my favorite. With Transformers, I'm pretty good friends with the casting director and she called me in so I did it. And, for Walk Hard, I think I also knew the casting director and they were like 'will you come in and just play around with this and see what comes out?' and I'm like 'sure'. So, I ended up doing it and working with John C. Reilly and Tim Meadows was awesome but what wasn't awesome was having to smoke those herbal cigarettes all day long. My fingers were yellow and it was like 'ugh'. It was so bad.

TeenHollywood: Where was the socialite in Transformers?

Odette: I'm in the car and Shia LaBeouf is coming toward me and he hits my car and I say something like 'did that guy dent my car?' and then the Transformer comes up.

TeenHollywood: You look like Meagan Fox (of Transformers). You two could play sisters.

Odette: I get that a lot. I met her while I was shooting Transformers and she was really nice but I get that comparison a lot which is fine. I'll take it. She's beautiful.