Kyle Gallner on A Nightmare on Elm Street and Acting Scared in a Speedo

That casting call also hinted at elements of your character that we don't see, like he runs a school podcast. Did that get deleted?

That was kind of in the original script, and then through rewrites, things changed. Some stuff was gotten rid of, like the podcast thing.

But the Speedo thing stayed in.

The Speedo thing stayed in. I was like, "No, really guys." [Laughs]

Samuel Bayer's been directing music videos for almost two decades. How did he direct you differently in Elm Street than someone who's spent their life in features?

This movie is very visual in that you have to create two different landscapes between the dream world and the real world, and you have to show the transitions between both. Sam is very good with the visual aspect of making everything feel real and look pretty amazing. At the end of the day, he's a director who can work with actors, but I've never really had a director on such a big-budget film that also had to worry so heavily about visualization. The movies that I'm used to are kind of more character-driven, so it was kind of weird to learn a whole new skill set and see Sam work. I'd never seen anything like that.

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You're also in a movie coming up called Beautiful Boy, where you're the catalyst for a school shooting. Maria Bello told me about it and it sounded rough.

It's an interesting movie. There's been takes on Columbine and school shooters, and it's always very sad and a difficult situation, but this is a movie where you see it through the eyes of the parents [of the killer]. The kid isn't the main focal point; as you said, the kid is just the catalyst. People forget at the end of the day that these parents lost a child as well. They're still going through a mourning process, and they have to deal with all the parents who blame them: "Why did you raise such a monster? You must be terrible people." Really, it might not have been their fault at all -- their kid could have been a loose cannon who never spoke to his parents.

How do you deal with the people who might not want to see that sort of story dramatized?

It is a difficult situation, but that's the point of film: to push boundaries and tell things that have never been told and try to see things through different people's eyes. I've played a handful of evil or bad people, but for the most part, these kids kind of see what they're doing as right. It makes sense to them, even if the rest of the world doesn't understand. Everyone does something for a reason and these are terrible things, but it's not like [Beautiful Boy] is making this kid out to be a hero.

What is it about you, Kyle, that you're so often cast to play out these molestation and murder storylines? Veronica Mars, Law and Order: SVU, Nightmare on Elm Street, Beautiful Boy...

This is the weird thing! [Laughs] In TV, kid roles are like this: You're either in a couple minutes of an episode playing somebody's kid, or you get in these procedurals where you're crying or you're playing a witness or you're playing a crazy person. Every once in a while you get a big guest star role, but there's a formula to those TV shows. I've done more TV than film, so it seems like I've played more bad guys, but between playing The Flash [on Smallville] or Gary Sinise's son on CSI: New York, I've played some good guys on TV. Actually, in my film roles, it's different. I play mostly bad guys on TV and mostly good guys in movies.

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