Brittany Snow in Finding Amanda Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

After a string of light comedies (The Pacifier, John Tucker Must Die), a splashy screen adaptation of a Broadway hit (Hairspray), and a slasher flick (Prom Night), Brittany Snow is reinventing her career with a trio of dramatic roles that deal with addiction, emotional family entanglements, and murder.

Snow gives her bubbly teen persona an unsettling twist in Peter Tolan's Finding Amanda, a black comedy starring Matthew Broderick as Taylor Mendon, a failed TV producer with a penchant for booze, drugs, and playing the ponies. He comes to the lopsided conclusion that he can redeem himself in his wife's eyes by being a dutiful uncle and saving his niece Amanda from a life of degradation, but comes to realize that he can't keep his own demons in check. Snow is Amanda, a bright and breezy prostitute who frequents the lobbies of Las Vegas's best hotels and casinos in search of johns and thinks it's hilarious her uncle has come to "save" her and take her to rehab.

In this exclusive interview with Premiere.com, Snow talks about hanging with strippers while researching Finding Amanda, stalking Michelle Pfeiffer on the set of Hairspray, and why she likes to do movies that make her feel a little bit scared.

So, did you take a pole-dancing seminar at a local community college in preparation for the part of Amanda?
No, I didn't actually, which is a shame because I probably should have just for the experience of it, if nothing else.

Or hang out with some ladies of the night for research?
I did. I did a lot of research with [strippers] because I wanted to get a basic understanding of what their mindset was, where they were from, their personality, to see them in their element in the strip club, to see how they moved and how they talked, especially when they talked about their job and what they did. It was a completely different tone and a way of speaking and acting from when they talked to me about their friends or their mom and dad or girl things and bonding. I would ask them about instances that occurred and hard times that they have had. They probably didn't tell me everything, of course, but it was very interesting to me what they would say and how they would say it when I asked about stripping or the one whom I talked to about prostitution. I tried to apply [what they told me] to the character of Amanda.

So are you saying that they compartmentalize the different parts of their lives?
Not necessarily. I talked to this one girl who was a stripper. It was interesting because she looked exactly like this girl I had gone to high school with — almost to a T. I almost thought it was her when I saw her dancing, so I called her over. It was certainly the most expensive conversation I had ever had with anybody! We talked for almost three hours. By the end of it, I thankfully had a good way of getting to know [these] girls. I think she trusted me a little bit and told me things about her life. What was so crazy was when she talked to me about girl things and her boyfriend, who was in the Army. She was very real and very direct. She looked me in the eye and was so cute and funny.

[But] the minute she started talking about stripping and how she got into that and things that had happened at the strip club, she became this completely different person. She was so shut off. There was nothing going on behind her eyes, from what I saw. It was almost like she had rehearsed what she was saying. It was almost like she was told to say it. She was really happy about it and excited, saying [things like], "It is what it is!" Nonchalant and very flip about what she did and how she got the work. I could tell there was something going on, but it was so nonchalant that it was uncomfortable. I remember thinking that [that] is what I wanted [for] Amanda, because I want the audience to feel uncomfortable. We know that Amanda loves her job, but she is so happy and so over the top that the audience knows right away that this is a façade.