Katie Chang plays the ringleader of a girl gang in Sofia Coppola's new movie The Bling Ring: a big role for a teenage actress in her first feature film, but one seemingly tailor-made for her.

"They were looking for a 17-year-old Korean-American girl with no accent," she told Splash, the Chicago Sun-Times' style magazine, in an article published June 13. Chang is a native of the Chicagoland suburb Wilmette).

"It was like lightning striking," she said.

Although she'd worked years in the theater, the actress said she had to learn some of the tricks of the film trade the hard way, right on the set.

"I was so untrained and naïve," she told about her filming work.

Chang recalled a particular scene that took forever because she was flummoxed by movie lighting.

"The scene where we're about to go into Rachel Bilson's house took so long to film because I couldn't understand the concept of lighting a scene," she said. "But everybody was like, 'It's her first movie, we'll give her a break.'"

Chang said that as a Hollywood newbie, an intimidation factor also came into play when meeting her director and co-star Emma Watson.

"I'm a huge fan of Sofia's. I've never been that nervous in my life," she said, as she detailed her first meeting with the director.

"But she's so calming and at ease that the second I went in there, I didn't feel nervous anymore."

It was likewise with Watson. Chang said her co-star isn't actually scary,"but just growing up and knowing her name, to suddenly be in a room with her is really odd and confusing."

Chang credited her theater training with helping her shape her character Rebecca Ahn, who she describes as a character "deeply self-conscious" and with "very low self-worth."

"When you're a kid, you think you want to be an actor, but really, you're like, 'I want to be on the Disney Channel,'" said the actress.

"But the ATC [the Actors Training Center at the Wilmette Theatre, where Chang honed her craft] stressed character development, backstory. [Acting] was about the human condition, which I'd never considered before."

Not unlike her character, the allure of Hollywood has gotten to Chang, just not in the same way: a close encounter with Steven Spielberg at this year's Cannes Film Festival got her body-checked, hockey-style, into the legendary director by her own mother.

"She did get a picture with him, though, so I guess it was all worth it."

Before she makes her move to Hollywood, there are just a few things Chang said she has to do: graduate high school.

"New Trier was a great place to be for four years, but I'm excited to move on," she said of her high school experience.

She also wanted to make her way through college. Chang used Watson, a current Brown student, and veteran actresses Jodie Foster and Natalie Portman as influences to keep up her acting work while staying in school.

Her career afterwards, however, will be a little more open.

"I've spent a lot of my high school career trying to plan everything," she told the magazine. "Maybe the next few years of my life will be a little less planned."

The Bling Ring opened in New York and Los Angeles on June 14, and will be available in wide release June 21.

Check out behind-the-scenes photos from The Bling Ring Instagram page here.

Tags: The Bling Ring