Lou Pucci: with a finger-licking good performance in the season's most talked-about indie film, Lou Pucci has got Hollywood insiders licking their chops. Here he spills it with fellow buzz boy Justin Chatwin

Lou Pucci started acting as a preteen in musical theater, eventually starring in The Sound of Music on Broadway and making his screen debut in 2002 with Rebecca Miller's Personal Velocity. He followed that up earlier this year with a brief turn in the HBO film Empire Falls, and he recently appeared in the off-center teen movie, The Chumscrubber. But it's his performance in this month's Thumbsucker--one of the most talked-about films of the year--that's put the 20-year-old New Jersey native on the map. In Thumbsucker, directed by Mike Mills, Pucci plays high school senior Justin Cobb, who, while struggling with all the various forces (girls, parents, teachers) that breed angst in shaggy-haired adolescents, grapples with one problem that usually strikes a little earlier in life: He can't stop sucking his thumb. And while Justin's thumb-sucking sets him off on a quest for solutions that is both heartfelt and humorous, filled with missteps, Ritalin-fueled rages, and pot-smoking hazes, Pucci's performance has set the actor off on a trip of his own, scoring him awards at both the Sundance and Berlin film festivals. Here he talks to his Chumscrubber co-star, and sometime fishing mate, Justin Chatwin.

JUSTIN CHATWIN: So, Pucci, can we talk about your car?

LOU PUCCI: Yes, we can. I'm looking at it out the window right now. It's a beast. It's awesome. It's a black '89 Crown Victoria. It's like an old black cop car.

JC: What made you go to the dealership and ask for a cop car?

LP: I didn't. I went to a mechanic. My friend Jacqui's boyfriend worked as a gas station attendant, and his boss was getting rid of his car, so I bought it. It's not really an old cop car, but it could have been. I'm even going to look up the legality of buying one of those lights that go on the side, like a searchlight.

JC: What would you do with it?

LP: I don't know. It would just look like I was a cop. Everybody would get out of my way. My car is a beast! It's made of pure steel.

JC: Just like you, man.

LP: No, I have it to make up for something. I'm frail and doubtful--this car is definitely confident.

JC: Would you consider yourself afraid of everything or afraid of nothing?

LP: I'd say I'm right in the middle. I'm pretty scared of a bunch of things--but I still do them.

JC: Like what?

LP: Gee, how about any audition? You're willingly going in there for some random person to judge you. Any audition I've ever been in was one of the scariest things I've ever done, but at the same time it was still fun. The first time I really scared the crap out of myself was on my first audition. My parents made me do it. They made me go and sing and dance, and I'd never done either before. So I went and did all that in an audition in front of all these people. But all of a sudden my energy just perked up and adrenaline ran through me, and I could do just anything. I think that was something that led me to be able to go to auditions, because that happens every time now. If I go in there and I'm nervous as hell and I scare the crap out of myself, then that's when I get the part.

JC: Do you ever wish that you could edit moments in your life or take anything back?

LP: No, I don't. Maybe right after a situation happens, I'll say, "Man, I wish I did that differently." But at the same time, I would never take back any piece of my life that I've lived so far because I really love mistakes. The mistakes are what I learn from. Growing up going to a Christian school, I always prayed for stuff. When I was younger, I'd pray for material things, or I would pray for the girl next to me. I always prayed for good things to happen. And then, all of a sudden, around the end of my senior year of high school, I started praying and thanking God for all the bad things and not just the good ones. I would say, like, Hey, thank you for having that girl be such a bitch to me, because I'll never talk to her again unless she talks to me now, and I learned from that one. You know what I mean? Thank you for me stubbing my toe. So maybe I'm some kind of weird sadist or S&M freak, but I think that pain is good. Pain is the one thing that you learn from, and I'm interested in learning.

JC: Would you put yourself in the position to get your heart broken just for the experience?

LP: Yes. Definitely. I think my mind does that on its own, before I get to the conscious level of choosing it. I think it just kind of happens most of the time, and then I don't know how else to explain it other than sometimes I will go out and do something retarded just for the sake of having a story about it.

JC: Okay, Pucc, if you could have one super power, what would it be?

LP: I would like to be able to stop time. Think of all you could do with that, man. You could do whatever the hell you wanted while everybody else is stopped. Man, you could do anything.

JC: You're a pervert.

LP: Maybe a little bit. But just think about it: If somebody was going to hit you, you could just stop time and walk away and then appear behind them when you started time again.