The little girl on Elm St. Julianna Damm scrawls autographs between bike rides and homework. Alas, the 7-year-old's parents won't let their youngest child watch her R-rated debut film for another 10 years.
"I kind of mind," the young Lowell actress admitted. "I really want to see it."
"It" is "A Nightmare on Elm Street," Samuel Bayer's remake of Wes Craven's 1984 slasher classic. Opening Friday, the movie stars Jackie Earle Haley ("Watchmen") as Freddy Krueger, the knife-fingered punster who terrorizes teens in their dreams.
Julianna, a ringer for pet target Katie Cassidy -- aka "Kris" -- snagged the role of the young Kris in flashbacks and fantasy sequences. The $27 million movie was filmed last year in Gary and throughout the Chicago area.
Horror icon Krueger menaces the blue-eyed, 3-foot-9 blonde in two scenes, a Warner Bros. publicist said. He chases big and little Kris down a hallway and into a boiler room. He also ambushes little Kris as she drops flowers in an open grave in a cemetery. "Freddy grabs my leg, and I had to pretend to scream," Julianna chirped.
Her own taste in films runs to Disney cartoons. Scary movies "give me nightmares," she confessed.
A second-grader at Three Creeks Elementary School, Julianna appeared at age 5 in print ads for Sears and the Bradford Exchange. Producers spied her audition tape, called her parents and asked if she would audition for "Elm Street." Kevin and Diana Damm were stunned, then concerned about the violent nature of the franchise.
Their fears were quickly allayed. Bayer promised the pint-sized actors wouldn't "see anything scary," Diana Damm said. "And they kept the parents on the set, close by."
As for Haley, the good-natured star became her playmate during her week on the set. Before shooting the creepy graveyard scene, the actor let Julianna examine his prosthetic hand so she knew the blades were rubber.
Her favorite castmate was Cassidy, 25, who has the makings of a perfect baby-sitter. "I don't even have her phone number," Julianna said regretfully.
When the movie opens Friday, her family -- including sister Alex, 17, and brother Tyler, 14 -- will celebrate by going out for dinner. Then an aunt is taking the kids home, while the adults see "Elm Street."
"When it comes out on DVD, we'll let her see her scenes," Diana Damm said.
Despite her brush with Freddy's razor-sharp blades, life is back to normal. Julianna has to make her bed and do her chores. Her parents banked her paychecks, so she's mulling medical school if an acting career doesn't pan out.
"I want to be a pediatrician," she said.
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