You can often chart the rise of a young actor or actress by the on-screen company they keep, in which case British-born Imogen Poots is doing more than fine. Having come off a film with Catherine Keener, Christopher Walken and Philip Seymour Hoffman, she now stars alongside Colin Farrell and Anton Yelchin in Fright Night, playing the latter’s sweet girlfriend, and an unwitting object of temptation for the former. In films like the striking and austere schoolhouse drama Cracks (the directorial debut of Jordan Scott, daughter of Ridley Scott), meanwhile, and last year’s Solitary Man, in which she hooked up with Michael Douglas, Poots is showing a range that obviously endears her to casting directors and filmmakers alike.

With Fright Night, though, the 22-year-old actress has a potentially huge commercial hit-in-waiting, which makes it an exciting but nerve-racking time. I recently had a chance to chat one-on-one with Poots — an avowed music fan, of Leonard Cohen, The Smiths and doo-wop tunes, among other genres — about crafting (and keeping) an American accent, the proper pronunciation of her name, what academic disciplines she hopes to one day study, and how she’ll be delving even further into music in her next project. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.