Schoolgirl Rachel Hurd-Wood is set for movie stardom when Peter Pan – billed as this Christmas’s big family film – opens in cinemas worldwide this month.

The 13-year-old was picked from thousands of hopefuls to play Wendy Darling in the film, based on JM Barrie’s classic story about the boy who refused to grow up.

“One minute I’m walking across the playground to maths, the next I’m flying out to Hollywood to meet the world’s press. It’s a dream come true,” said Rachel.

QUESTION: So is there an exciting story behind how you got to be cast as Wendy?

RHW: My grandparents heard about it on the television and told my mom. One day when I came home from school, she measured me to see if I was within the height restrictions, without telling me what she was doing. I was confused as to why she was doing that. Then she told me that I was within the height restrictions and I got really excited and I thought, “I’d love to do an audition.”

QUESTION: How tough was the audition process?

A teenager plucked from obscurity to appear in the new Peter Pan film has said she is still shocked at her luck.

Rachel Hurd-Wood, 13, from Godalming in Surrey, beat hundreds of other hopefuls to play Wendy in the £65m film, which stars Jeremy Sumpter as the boy hero.

“I was so lucky to get this part and the experience was just amazing,” Hurd said at the London premiere on Tuesday night.

Her only acting experience before the film had been in a school play.

According to Director P.J. Hogan, 14-year-old Jeremy Sumpter didn’t so much walk into his audition for Peter Pan as swagger in like a young Errol Flynn. Producer Lucy Fisher gave audition tapes to her young daughters who picked Jeremy hands down! Bad guy Jason Isaacs (he was the bad British Captain who killed Heath Ledger in The Patriot) plays a very hot, menacing Captain Hook in the film. He also plays a very mousy Mr. Darling, Wendy’s dad. When we interviewed the cast of the new Peter Pan recently, we learned that Jason is funny, warm and fuzzy with the kids in real life and tells some great stories. He and Jeremy seem more like a cool uncle and his nephew than life or death adversaries. Jason helped moderate the panel, encouraging young actors Jeremy and 13-year-old first-timer Rachel Hurd-Wood, who plays Wendy, to tell the press all about the filming of the movie and off-set fun.

An American Haunting, (opening May 5th) starring Rachel Hurd-Wood, Donald Sutherland, and Sissy Spacek, is based on the legend of the Bell Witch; actually, based on a book about the Bell Witch entitled The Bell Witch: An American Haunting by Brent Monahan. It’s set in 1818-ish in Tennessee, and has that great old ‘American’ horror feel that can only come with something like the writings of Washington Irving or H.P. Lovecraft. More frightening than the story of The Amityville Horror, the legend of the Bell Witch is a much-argued story of poltergeist activity, witchcraft, and early American superstition that still baffles historians to this day. Was it all a hoax? Was it a demon? A curse from a local witch named Kate Bats? Betsy Bell, played by Rachel Hurd-Wood (she played Wendy in 2003’s Peter Pan) is a young woman beset by troubles. Completely opposite of Rachel herself, who is a well-adjusted and polite young woman who kind of ‘fell’ into acting accidentally. Now she has co-starred opposite Jeremy Sumpter (yummy, in a pedophilia-way), Sissy Spacek, Donald Sutherland, and has a new thriller coming out later this year with Alan Rickman and Dustin Hoffman. Can we get started yet? Ok! let’s talk to Rachel.

At the young age of 15, British-born Rachel Hurd-Wood has already been in several major films. She made her acting debut in P.J. Hogan’s “Peter Pan” in 2000 and she will soon be seen in “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer”, co-starring with Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman. Currently, she is going up against Hollywood heavyweights Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek in Courtney Solomon’s chilling “An American Haunting” where she portrays Betsy Bell, the principle target of the entity terrorizing the Bell family in early 19th-century Tennessee.

BD: Hello Rachel and thanks for talking to Bloody-Disgusting.

RH-W: You’re very welcome.

The star of the horror film speaks out on taking the lead role

Rachel Hurd-Wood is a normal 15 year old girl, except for the fact that she’ll scare the heck out of you in her latest film, An American Haunting. She plays the lead in the movie, Betsy Bell, based on the true story of the Bell Witch.

The legend is known in Adams, Tennessee as the only known case of a spirit causing the death of a person. An American Haunting stars Donald Sutherland, James D’Arcy, and Sissy Spacek as the family who’s haunted by this spirit. Director, Courtney Solomon found Rachel amongst the hundreds of girls who auditioned; funny enough, Rachel was the first actress he saw.

The story of the Bell Witch, a nearly 200-year old legend that is the first account of a spirit being officially responsible for a person’s death in American history, sets the stage for An American Haunting. In the film, writer/director Courtney Solomon presents one interpretation of the paranormal tale, which has been the basis for several books throughout the years. He examines the lives of patriarch John Bell (Donald Sutherland), matriarch Lucy Bell (Sissy Spacek), and their daughter Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Wood), and explores the possibility that misdeeds brought a curse down upon the family, afflicting them with extended episodes of violent poltergeist activity.

There’s a fair chance you haven’t heard of Rachel Hurd-Wood, given that, as she says in our interview, “This is my first movie, this is my first acting really I’ve ever done.” So for that reason, today we would like to introduce you to the young lady who plays Wendy – or, to be more precise, Wendy Moira Angela Darling – in P.J. Hogan’s adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

While filming Peter Pan and having to subsequently keep quiet about the secrets of this new version, she is nowadays most excited to talk about her remarkable experiences since she was cast.

When Robert E. Howard penned stories in the 1930s about his comic book hero Solomon Kane, he would write of nubile lovelies in need of rescue by the ‘vengeful Puritan’ (as Kane was known).

Many feminists have complained that Howard demeaned women, and in his Kane tales that’s probably true (although he also wrote the Conan the Barbarian books, and there’s nothing subservient about Red Sonja). But this is the 21st century, so in the latest film version of the stories, the heroine, as played by 17-year-old Rachel Hurd-Wood, is not so much a damsel in distress as a very feisty young woman who doesn’t think she needs a hero to ‘rescue’ her.