Digest: What's the best thing about being on a TV show?
Byrnes: You get to make your own character up. You can be a person you never got to be. You hear people from movies who were bad characters and they say [uses deep, "villainous" voice], "I love playing bad characters because you get to play people that your mother and father would never let you be!" You can be an entirely new person.

Digest: Do you want to be an actress when you grow up?
Byrnes: Yes. An actress-slash-singer, kind of like from Beaches ... Bette Midler. Like the role she had, that's the kind of roles I want to have.

Digest: What kind of music do you like?
Byrnes: Bernadette Peters.

Digest: So you like Broadway?
Byrnes (gets very excited): Wicked [the musical]! Now I have the CD to it and I sing it out and once I sang it in public and they were like, "Bravo, little girl." I was like, "Didn't you ever hear a girl sing before?"

Digest: Would you want to do a musical?
Byrnes: I do them already. None on Broadway, though.

Digest: Which ones?
Byrnes: Annie, Into The Woods. In Into The Woods, I played a bad character. It was a junior version with little kids like me. I played the bad girl [the Queen from Snow White] and got to say, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall ... who's the fairest of them all?" In Annie, I did Molly. I was in it twice, actually. Now they're doing Oliver, but I'm not in that.

Digest: That's more of a boy musical.
Byrnes: Yeah. In Annie, I sang "Tomorrow." At the end, when everyone's clapping, I would be belting it out and everyone would be looking at me. I'd be like, "What, get back to your singing." I wasn't supposed to be singing that loud, but I was.

Digest: What else do you like to do for fun?
Byrnes: Piano, dance, sing, draw. I do puzzles, too. Crosswords, jigsaw puzzles. I like the piano, it's great. Sometimes my dad and I play games. We make up silly songs. Give me a topic.

Digest: Um, how about your family?
Byrnes (starts singing): When I'm with my family, I'm happy because they're the best friends I could ever have ... I could go on forever.

Digest: That's really good. Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Byrnes: No. Well, I have one brother ... Green Bird. He's an evil bird, brother!

Digest: Why is he evil?
Byrnes: Every time I cry, he copies me. Let's do it. [Fake cries]. Waahhh! (The bird starts crowing in the background, and sure enough, starts crying along with her.)

Digest: I hear him! That's a great trick.