Carly Schroeder
Recognize Carly Schroeder from Lizzie McGuire as Matt's scheming friend, Melina? With those days long behind her, Carly is hanging with lions, swimming with dolphins, and playing soccer with the boys. If that's work, what does she do for fun?
THE STAR SCOOP:
Younger fans will know you from
Lizzie McGuire. Please tell us you're not a sneaky little prankster, like Melina.
CARLY SCHROEDER:
I'm really just the average kid. I've always been a little more apt to talking to adults, making conversation, and I'm always trying to do my own thing. I'm not really into exactly what the crowd does. I just like being my own person.
THE STAR SCOOP:
You've got a lot of projects going on right now. Let's discuss them a bit. We'll start with
Prey.
SCHROEDER:
Prey is a movie that we flew to South Africa to shoot. It's basically the story of a family that goes to South Africa to go on safari, and it's horrible. They get stranded in the middle of the savannah, and lions start attacking them, and it's just incredible. It was amazing working with lions. They're not trained. They have a little bit of training, but when they get on there, they're wild. You really can't train lions to be good [laughs]. I had a lion actually burst through the window when we were doing a scene, this was the first time I'd worked with them. They looked through the window, put both paws on the windshield and tried to come in and kill us. They snapped the window. It was incredible. After that, I was like, I think that's the last time I'm going to be in the car with them [laughs]. It was incredible and intense.
THE STAR SCOOP:
Moving on from lions to dolphins, you're also involved in
Eye of the Dolphin.
SCHROEDER:
Eye of the Dolphin is about a girl of fourteen, who is living with her grandma. Her mother died, she never knew her father, and she just is a complete out of control girl. Her grandma ends up not being able to handle her, and has to take her down to the Bahamas, where she explains that her father does still live there and is alive. And so, it's kind of like, she's thrown into this whole conflict of meeting her father, she doesn't want to. She's used to her fast lane life in L.A., and goes down, and, dolphins are just such incredible animals, and when she meets them, she makes an automatic connection with them, and that kind of pulls her through the whole hard time.
THE STAR SCOOP:
Tell us more about the dolphins!
SCHROEDER:
Dolphins are the sweetest things, they all have personalities. We worked with sixteen of them, and they all just, every single day, they would, when you walked out, they would roll over on their side and they'd look at you with one eye and they'd jump out of the water, and they'd be doing flips. They were always so happy to be around you. And the little boys, they had the cutest personalities, because they knew they were something else. They would come by you, and they'd do their little flip thing, and they'd make sure you were looking. It was like real life [laughs].
THE STAR SCOOP:
Right now you're working on
Gracie.
SCHROEDER:
I am in intense soccer training right now. I'm loving every minute of it. I've never had the chance to play any soccer because I've been acting since I was six. I've never had time to be on a team, but I love running, so it's like, just kind of getting out there. These girls that I'm working with, it's incredible, just how they train, and how much effort they put into it. I never knew how challenging the whole sport was. They're absolutely rough. Some people think football is the most contact sport, but it's not. Soccer, they slam into each other, they're verbally abusing each other on and off, it's such an intense game. You come off the field, and you're dripping with sweat, it's almost like, I'm kind of liking it [laughs]. I'm working five days a week, doing weight training, and eating right to make sure I'm staying healthy. I'm really getting into this role. I watched the world cup, and that was incredibly awesome. I love going every day, I love seeing all the people I'm working with that are training me. They're there for me, which is a nice feeling, that they're there to do anything to help me get in the best shape I can for this movie. It's a really cool movie, because I get to play with boys. It's a boy's soccer team. It's set in the 70s, so the girls couldn't play on the soccer team, because it was a boys' sport, and so it kind of breaks through. It's the story of Elizabeth Shue's life when she was younger. That's why I think it's really important to portray it, and get into, and make sure [I'm] fit, and doing everything that she could do. It's a movie with a lot of heart, so it's really important to me.
THE STAR SCOOP:
So how do you go from being in a sidekick role on
Lizzie McGuire to these big film roles as a leading young lady?
SCHROEDER:
I did a movie called
Mean Creek, and that was kind of my whole, huge, dramatic role that I got to play. That was probably one of my most amazing, favorite films, because I got to work with a great director, he was the writer, and he really didn't know that much about girls so he said, go for it, I don't know what you girls do, so do what you would do. And I got to work with a bunch of boys that were just all amazing actors, and that kind of set me off. And then I did
Lizzie McGuire, and I just kind of kept going with that.
THE STAR SCOOP:
With all this work in your life, are you finding it hard to be an almost 16 year-old, normal girl?
SCHROEDER:
I guess in a way, it is kind of difficult, because I wasn't able to go school, high school, so I was home schooled, so I didn't get to have all the interactions with my friends. I still have friends sleep over; I go to plays, dinners, and ballets with my friends. We go to beach, hang out. I'm totally the opposite of being bad.
THE STAR SCOOP:
What should your fans know about you?
SCHROEDER:
I want them to know that I'm all over the place; I'm not playing the same character every time. I want to be a different array of people. It's kind of like my personality; I'm just kind of like here, there. I'm looking at a script right now, for a gothic blond. I think that's like the coolest thing, the coolest character [laughs]. I just want them to watch how I grow and change and follow the different characters that I play, and hopefully they'll enjoy it.
THE STAR SCOOP:
So, what's next?
SCHROEDER:
I'm looking at quite a few movies right now, and considering, and picking and choosing which ones are right for me. I think movies for a while, but I'm really just looking for good material that I can give my best to perform on. It might be T.V., it might be a movie, it might be a series, I just want to make sure that I can take the audience on a journey, and it's believable. I want to make it real.