Abigail Breslin adjusts as workload grows

Little Miss Sunshine is growing up.

Abigail Breslin was only 5 when she made her film debut in Signs (2002) and only 10 when she earned an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actress for her performance as beauty-pageant contestant Olive Hoover in Little Miss Sunshine (2006).

She is almost 17 now, though, a young woman who has branched out to stage work — including a critically praised 2010 Broadway production of The Miracle Worker — and increasingly mature roles in such films as Definitely, Maybe (2007), My Sister’s Keeper (2009), Zombieland (2009) and New Year’s Eve (2011).

In the past year, Breslin has completed five films. The first to be released is The Call, a thriller that opened yesterday in central Ohio theaters. Breslin plays Casey, a kidnapped teenager whose only hope of rescue is Jordan (Halle Berry), the 911 operator she frantically calls from the trunk of her captor’s car.

“I try not to think too much about maturing or the responsibility I have on a set, because I’ll probably have a breakdown,” Breslin says, “but I am almost 17, and all of the roles I’m playing now are my age. I think that, at this point, it just feels like something natural.

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“Casey is your typical teenage girl,” the actress says. “She’s a pretty good girl. She doesn’t do a lot of bad things or curse too much. When she gets abducted she’s probably, you would think, the last person who’d be able to really defend herself.”

Speaking from her family’s home in New York, Breslin describes the low-budget production as a fast and wild ride. It also was a claustrophobic experience, forcing her to spend too many hours to count in a confined space.

“I was lucky that I was working with great people who didn’t make it too grueling for me,” she says, “but it is intense to get into that mind frame and to be in the trunks of various cars for so long.” The Call kicks off a spate of Breslin film projects. Also on the horizon are August: Osage County, Ender’s Game, Final Girl and Haunter. The projects run the gamut from sci-fi epic and comedy to a thriller.

At some point, Breslin says, she hopes to explore other facets of filmmaking, including producing, directing and writing. She is also into music. College looms as well, and she has her heart set on attending Notre Dame, if she does indeed take that next step in her education.

Right now, however, she is still a teenager and still a rising star. Although she is far from a tabloid magnet, she knows that many eyes are upon her. She has gone out for coffee and seen photos of herself posted, moments later, on Facebook or Instagram.

“It’s interesting, definitely,” the actress says. “I feel like I’ve grown up in the world of technology and all that stuff, so it doesn’t seem too foreign to me. I think everybody deals with pressure, whether you go to high school or whether you’re making movies. “Everybody feels like they have some sort of pressure to be a certain way.”