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Brittany Messina has wanted to be famous ever since she can remember. But after starring in a handful of low-budget slasher flicks, ditching “do-nothing” talent agencies and landing featured extra parts in a handful of Hollywood productions, only now does she realize just how hard it is going to be.

Take Glory Road, for example. The aspiring star saw her walk-on part in Disney’s feel-good basketball film as a chance to network and open a door or two to Hollywood. She got to meet headliners Josh Lucas and Emily Deschanel and casually befriended two of the film’s supporting actors. One day the actors stopped by her parents’ house in Central on the way to the film set in St. Francisville. They hung out for a while and left—all good. But days later, one of the actors invited her to his hotel room. Messina had a bad feeling about the call and flatly refused.

“After I didn’t go to their hotel room, they didn’t want to have anything to do with me,” the 21-year-old says shaking her head, her eyes wide as if reliving it. Sexual coercion is the oft-whispered underbelly of Hollywood, but multiple experiences like the Glory Road incident have convinced Messina the “casting couch” is more truth than myth. “Whenever people like that—the starring actors—want to meet with extras in the movie, they try to get one thing.”

Messina called her talent agency not long after the incident and told them she didn’t want to be an extra anymore. If extras were only viewed as people willing to do anything to get ahead, she wanted no part of it. The only thing Messina is relying on to get ahead is her own drive to become a star.

Though she may not be seen in any major films for a while, her headshot is in theatres this month. After auditioning for the Lindsey Lohan comedy Just My Luck, producers bought the rights to Messina’s promotional photo. It is being used in the film as the CD cover for the fictional pop star Lohan’s wannabe-singer admires.

For Messina, leaving the extras circuit meant saying goodbye to John Casablancas Model & Talent Agency, and hello, Fangoria?

After appearing in independent mystical thriller Hoodoo Voodoo and Death Plots, a collection of short films, Fangoria magazine and its horror movie festival named Messina its Future Scream Queen. It is a mantle that overwhelmed her—signing her first autographs at the festival was a total shock, she says—but not really one she plans to carry for long.

“Right now, it just seems like its horror movie after horror movie, but what I really want to do are Kate Hudson parts,” Messina says, before pausing. “Or a sitcom.”

Romantic comedies will have to wait, though, for now it’s back to horror. Messina’s latest, Shadow Grove, just wrapped in Lockport, La., and The Cenac Murders is up later this year. Though they have yet to stretch her acting chops, these projects give Messina plenty of opportunity to stretch her lungs for that infamous, blood-curdling scream.

“I cheered Kindergarten through 12th grade, and learning to cheer from your lungs and not your throat helps a lot,” Messina says. “Sometimes I have to do 15 or 20 takes in a row. It's kind of like holding your breath under water. It takes a lot out of me."