After hanging out on the set of Ocean's Twelve with Aunt Julia (Roberts) and, more important, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt, what girl wouldn't dream of becoming an actress? But, as 16-year-old Emma Roberts tells it, this whole acting thing had nothing to do with her famous aunt. She broke into the business after begging her mother, Kelly Cunningham (ex-girlfriend of actor Eric Roberts, Emma's father), to let her have a go at auditioning, and landing a role as Johnny Depp's daughter in the 2001 movie Blow. Then, at the age of 11, her career hit a dry patch. "I kind of auditioned a lot but wasn't really getting anything, and then started getting things again, so it was kind of, like, weird." Specifically, Nickelodeon Networks fell in love with her coltish, tweener energy and cast her in the television show Unfabulous, as Addie Singer, who deals with the total embarrassment of junior high (you know, like falling into the punch bowl in front of all your friends) by writing and singing pop songs. Roberts parlayed that into a starring movie role, in Aquamarine (2006), in which she discovers a wish-granting mermaid in the local beach club's swimming pool.

This summer, she may well be propelled to the league of Anne Hathaway circa The Princess Diaries and Lindsay Lohan pre-party animal by playing the title role in Nancy Drew. Though the Nancy Drew books belong to a quainter, more innocent generation, Roberts is succumbing to their charms. "People keep giving them to me as gifts, so I have a nice collection," she says. "They're cute. They're written really old-fashioned-y." In it for the long haul, Roberts is getting home-schooled and lining up new projects. She'll soon start shooting Wild Child, in which she plays a bad girl who is sent to English boarding school to get her act together. But other than becoming a young movie star, nothing has changed at all, she insists. "At home, I have to clean my room and do all that stuff that most teenagers have to do. A lot of people ask me, 'Do you get special treatment?' I'm like, 'No, if anything I get worse treatment!"'