Lukas Haas (PHOTO: Veronica Henri, SUN)

Lukas Haas made an indelible impression as a child actor, so it takes a moment to absorb the fact that the saucer-eyed, big-eared kid from Witness is six feet tall and just about to turn 30.

He's even grown into those ears.

Haas is one of the stars of a new film called Brick, a noirish outing that mixes Dashiell Hammett with highschool. The film, in which he plays a drug-dealing villain, brought the actor to Toronto last week. Haas as bad guy?

"My first villain," confirms the actor, cheerfully. Playing the bad guy was the selling point for him. "It's an exciting challenge to get to do something like that, because it's obvious people don't see me that way. At least, I believe that's the perception. If it was a bigger movie they probably wouldn't have come to me. You've got to prove yourself all the time as an actor," he says, earnestly.

"Now, maybe, people will think of me that way."

Well, professionally perhaps -- but Haas himself is far too polite and sweet-natured to get mistaken for the villain in real life. Haas was "discovered" by a casting agent while he was in kindergarten because everybody knew about his enthusiasm for costume and make-believe even then. He recalls, for example, his role as a spider in a school parade when he was about five years old.

And to be that spider, "I crawled two miles down Wilshire. My parents begged me to get up and walk, but it would have ruined the illusion. I had bloody hands and knees at the end," he says, laughing, "but I had accomplished my goal. It's who I was and who I am."

Despite that early start, Haas' career took an interesting turn when he was 13 years old. His family (his mother is a writer, his father an artist and he has younger twin brothers) moved from Los Angeles to Austin, Texas.

"It was a little weird. I wonder about it," says Haas. "It was good for my family, to be sure. I had established myself in L.A. as an actor and moving to Austin did separate me from all that. I kept working, so I'd go and make movies, but I wasn't in the mix in the same way."

That didn't stop him from starring in dozens of films such as Rambling Rose, Everyone Says I Love You or Mars Attacks! (where he worked with Natalie Portman, whom he later dated), but as Haas points out, the move had both good and bad results. On the positive side, living at a remove from the film industry let him have a far more normal teenage life and also allowed him to develop his music. Haas is a skilled pianist and drummer and after high school, he says, he just hung out in Austin and played in bands. He took a break from acting.

"I did get a little burned out. I started passing on stuff without reading it. I don't think it was a conscious decision. I started getting into music. I love it so much. It's a big, big part of my life."

Haas says he appeared recently on the Carson Daly show wearing both hats: To promote Brick and to play music. He says, "It's great just to have that creative outlet. With movies, you don't get to be in control. There's a director, a script and everything and it's more convoluted, but when you write a song it's more personal and it's just you. It's a wonderful way to express yourself."

And the downside?

"I really started missing acting," he says. "After a while, it was like, 'I love it! Why did I ever stop?' So I made a concerted effort to get back in," says the veteran of more than 40 films. Indeed, Haas has Nick Cassavetes' Alpha Dog and three other films coming up and is working on two more.

He says, "I feel like I've been opening a new chapter for myself over the last few years."

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