The Vampire Diaries young starlet Candice Accola dishes with Starpulse about her very first television series. Revealing everything from her move to Hollywood at age 16 to the brilliance of the show’s writers, she gives us the inside scoop straight from the down south set in Atlanta. The young actress is set to portray resident mean girl Caroline Truitt on the highly anticipated CW series premiering September 10.

Starpulse: How did you get started in this business? We heard you were a singer. How was the transition into acting?

Candice Accola: I moved to La when I was 16 and got record a deal with Maverick records-Warner Brothers. After I recorded the record they opened up the idea of auditioning and working towards getting into film and television as a way to market myself. I met a manager and I met with an agent and the more I started working the more I just really loved the job. So it just grew into its own thing and I never stopped and I love it more and more.

SP: Are there plans to try to incorporate acting and singing as you move through this career?

CA: I love making music. I don’t want to necessarily become a performer and have Caroline be a singer on the show or anything. I definitely want to keep this separate. Music is more of my own thing in my own time. Right now I am really excited to be part of a series.
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elf-possessed, unassuming, laid-back–and dead tired after flying all night from the set of The Vampire Diaries in Atlanta, Ga.

This isn’t Nina Dobrev’s thing.

She’s 20 years old, she’s Canadian, her family moved to Toronto from Sofia, Bulgaria, when she was two, she attended Toronto’s Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts and she grew up on Degrassi: The Next Generation. Hollywood? Not her deal. Not really.

Do the red carpet thing, stare back at the paparazzi, smile when told and work hard to look like you mean it and–most of all–don’t affect an attitude. That too-hip-for-the-room, ironic detachment thing is sooo last year.

This is a celebutante who reads, people. Like, actual books. On her official MySpace page– “After numerous fake profiles, I decided to make a real account where I (along with some help)will be occasionally posting new pictures, blogs and filming updates”–she lists Paulo

Coelho’s The Alchemist, Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones and Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces among her favourite books, along with the obvious–Twilight, the Harry Potter series–and not-so-obvious: Nova Scotia writer Ami McKay’s The Birth House.

Her heroes: Rachel Mc-Adams, Meryl Streep, child rights advocate (and fellow Canadian) Craig Kielburger.

Her favourite TV shows: Heroes, House, Grey’s Anatomy, Nip/Tuck, So You Think You Can Dance and, like, you know, Gossip Girl.

Movies? The Notebook, Knocked Up, Rent, Juno, Schindler’s List and–wait for it–Transformers.

Don’t try figuring her out, in other words. She’s complicated and normal, all in one.

In The Vampire Diaries, she plays Elena Gilbert, the proverbial good-girl-on-the-cusp-of-adulthood torn between two vampire brothers, one saintly, one more in tune with his dark side.

Thanks to the pop-cultural hysteria over Twilight, Elena Gilbert was the most sought-after role for young actresses since, well, Bella Swan in Twilight, right?

So the audition process was a fight-to-the-death, and Dobrev only managed to land the role by the skin of her teeth. Right?

“Actually,” Dobrev says matter-of-factly, “The Vampire Diaries was my first audition for a pilot. I came to L. A. for the first time in January. I read the script, and I loved it. Loved it. Thought it was really cool. I’d just gotten off (Degrassi), so obviously I was trained and ready. I knew the drill and everything that goes with it. The character was great. I guess something happened, and they liked what I was doing. (more…)

Fear.net have posted a great new interview with Steven R.McQueen, who plays Jeremy in the series. You can read it in full here.

Yeah. I just saw the pilot, it’s awesome. I play a kid, Jeremy, Elena’s younger brother, who is a character that wasn’t in the book. They added it. He’s pretty much a very destructive kid, he’s got addiction problems. He’s got a lot of different problems and he finds different ways to vent his pain than most would.

Zap2it have also posted a sketchy review of the show’s pilot. Only 3 and 1/2 stars from them, for now – but I’m sure they’ll get over that once they realize that Damon isn’t the only good thing behind the show. Read it here – beware of some spoilers.

The reason to watch the show is Ian Somerhalder (Boone on “Lost”) as Stefan’s brother, Damon, who is also brooding and sexy, but the bad kind of vampire. I honestly almost didn’t recognize Somerhalder even though I knew he starred in the series. The whole way he carries himself and walks and talks is completely different. He’d have Boone for breakfast and not give it a second thought.