I awoke early, and the killer was doing the dishes.

It was a surreal experience. I was with my wife in a state I'd never been before, sleeping at the house of someone I had previously only known electronically, and there was B-Movie diva, Debbie Rochon, doing the dishes from the previous night's feast ("Debbie Does Dishes in Dallas" ­ sorry, couldn't resist). I inch past her, grab a cup, snag some water to slake my thirst brought on by the blistering Texas heat. While she dries, I rinse out my mug. "Soap!" she snarls, whisking the cup from my hand. I swiftly back out of the room.

The above is obviously an exaggeration, though it's not too far off. Debbie Rochon is starring as the psychotic killer Jane Toppan in the upcoming film American Nightmare, the feature film debut of writer/director Jon Keeyes. And, as a method actress, she has spent a great amount of time preparing for this role. In a sense, she immersed herself in the head of someone who is mentally unstable. As a result, the usually amiable and personable Debbie Rochon has been, during this shoot, a tad anti-social. Just as the ocean is a tad damp.

Debbie Rochon is one of the few actresses working in the world of independent genre films who takes her job this seriously. She enjoys acting, enjoys her work ­ and it is work. In order to best portray Jane Toppan, Debbie essentially cut herself off from the rest of the cast of American Nightmare, particularly the lead, Brandy Little, who plays Jesse McClain, the central character in a group of seven friends who Jane Toppan targets. When the friends reveal their worst fears to the host of a pirate radio show, Jane inflicts upon each person their worst fear, torturing each friend, with the ultimate goal of completely destroying their lives. By isolating herself from her fellow actors, Debbie will be able to focus on solely on them as their characters on set, seeing them through Jane's eyes, through Jane's twisted and fractured perception of the world. As a result of this intensity, Debbie Rochon has created a chilling, three-dimensional person out of what could have become a simple cliched stock b-movie killer in the hands of a lesser actress. Also, as a result of this, the warm and funny woman has been downright scary to be around, both on and (though to a lesser extent) off the set. And even her friends have noticed the difference.

A few weeks later, Debbie is back to Debbie again, and Jane has been more or less imprisoned in celluloid. The voice on the other end of the phone sounds much more like the personable woman I've gotten to know. And so the interview begins with the question, "How difficult was it to stay in Jane's head for the fifteen day shooting-schedule?"

"It was difficult in the sense of being around people who wanted to socialize, and being around people that didn't know you," says Debbie. "I mean, you really had to go into it thinking, "Well they're either going to understand or they're not." But my job was not to be popular. My job is to do my ultimate best. And that's why everybody is here: to make the best movie possible. So regardless of what others' reactions were, I felt an obligation to do what I felt I had to do to be in the role. It wasn't hard for me ­ there were times I felt bad about the degree of anti-social I was in between shooting, in the few hours that I had to sleep and eat and all that. But I think, you know, that people should understand. And if they don't, well, hopefully, they will look at the project that we've all worked so hard on and think that it, "well, I understand in retrospect what she was doing." And hopefully it worked."

This sort of absorption into the mind of a character is unusual for any actor, many of whom find it easier to just turn the character on while the cameras are rolling. But for Debbie, this wasn't a consideration. "I might have been able to [turn it on and off] but I might not. The easiest way for me to do the role was to just go into that part of myself and let it be. Go there and let it affect me. And if I was to only let it affect me on and off, on and off, then I think it ­ it felt like it would have been a more shallow experience. Some people like to treat their role like it is a very different person than themself. And certainly we wouldn't go around doing what our characters are do by any stretch of the imagination. But again, I sort of have to -- it's sort of like a part of you that you tap into, so when I was performing, it was me in that state. In that really crazed state, but it was still me."

Was this a rough state to be in? "Sometimes, yeah, it would definitely get to you. Because people would say very nice things to you, and it's almost like you had to not even let that affect you. I'm all about energy, and I think if I were doing a comedy, it may be part of my job working on the character to be very social, very outgoing and connect as much as possible with people. Whereas with this, I felt it was very much my job to not connect. It's weird to say that it felt good, because it was a very harsh part of myself that I lived in, but it felt good as an actor. I felt like I was definitely there. As an actor I walked away, and it took me a few days to get over it and to let go, and just get back to myself. It was good. Any time that I use myself to that degree, when I really experience something, that's the high that I like."

Writer Jon Keeyes named his psychopathic diva after a real serial killer, a nurse who murdered an almost uncountable amount of people in the late 1800s. In American Nightmare, the Jane Toppan character is a nurse as well. But the similarities pretty much stop there. "It was loosely based on Jane Toppan it's not an exact telling of her story," Debbie explains. "But [studying the real Jane Toppan] was helpful in the sense that I could find out where her head was at. At the same time I really did study a number of serial killers while preparing."

This, I knew, was an understatement. Debbie studied serial killers with a fervor rarely seen outside of those preparing their masters' thesis. She spoke to psychologists about serial killers, even going so far as having forensic psychologists create profiles of Jane Toppan. 'So tell me,' I say, 'about the Jane Toppan in American Nightmare.'

And there is a pause. Debbie chooses her words carefully, never rushing into things. "I don't want to generalize it and say she's just plain crazy. I think she's acting out some very, very severe dysfunctions that happened in childhood. I think that she is very full of rage. She's into self-mutilation, she's not just into the killing. Which is an aspect [that came into play] when we first had the scene with the insinuated phone-sex with the DJ in the car, that was just a scene where Jane was supposed to be masturbating. But I said to Jon, that just doesn't ring true, because people who are really messed-up it is directly related ­ you do any research on serial killers and you see that their neurosis and their problems are all directly related to sexuality. So I can't see her being well enough to have phone sex. I said, I think anything she'd be cutting herself, and anyone listening to the show, would think that she was getting off. But the way that was going to work, to tie to the kind of sexuality problem aspect of her character, it [would have to be] mutilation. I don't think that there is any serial killer that could be healthy in a sexual way. If you look at any of the problems that we [all] have, they're so directly related to our sexuality. [In the film, there is] one time where she seduces a man and then kills him ­ she ties him up. And it wasn't exactly written that way ­ it was written that she ties him up, but I said to Jon, she has to tie him up before she gets at all undressed, because the last thing she could tolerate is something touching her in a sexual way. If it doesn't make sense to you, there is no way [to play the scene] and have it make sense to the audience. It had to make sense to me first. So I did that one bit of tweaking so that it would make sense for Jane."

An entertainment journalist, Jon Keeyes struck up a friendship with Debbie a number of years ago. It was this friendship that prompted him to pitch her the idea for his first screenplay. "Jon said he was making a movie, and he told me the basic idea and I loved it. Not only did I love the pirate radio aspect, but I loved the female serial killer. He made [it] very clear that this is not a femme fatale, and that's what turned me on to this character. That's she's absolutely not a superficial female killer that you don't really buy, but the film is super-sexy -- and it's not that. It's not even close to that. It was just a challenge to be female and to be a serial killer, and that's just a role that I always wanted to do. It was just actually magical, in a way, that he had always had me in mind [for the role of Jane], and I thought it was very cool, because that was always the role that I wanted to do. Just extremely special for that reason."

Debbie pauses for a moment, gathering her thoughts. "You do a lot of film work and you really enjoy yourself. And you treasure being able to work in film, because it's certainly the love of my life. But this is the first experience that has ever happened, in my life, in that he presented me with this thing that I always wanted to do.

"I have worked with a lot of very nice people, people who were super-cool. But, the weird thing with Jon is that he's always on the same page you are. I will say something to him, regarding the character, or a slight alteration in a line, or motivation in a scene, and he will say "I was just going to say that", or "I was just thinking that". It was almost like being directed on a physical plane and on a psychic plane. I mean that very seriously. I think that he was just so right-on and he just trusted me so much and saw what I was doing, and had I been going in the wrong direction, I have no doubt he would have corrected me. But it was almost as though Jane had a life of her own in a way. And he was just so receptive. If I made a suggestion, say a couple of days before we shot the scene, he would say "Oh that sounds great!" And we would get to the day of shooting, and we both would know that what he had originally written was better. But he was open to changing it.

"The perfect example ­ and this shows what a giving, giving man he is ­ and I've never come across this before. We were going to shoot two endings ­ and I'm not going to tell you which one we did or didn't ­" [Not that I would have printed them anyway but grrr] "-- the day we were going to shoot one of them, that morning, when we were going over the script, I said to him, "Because of the way she's come together, now that we're doing it, this ending is not going to work." And he just looked at me and said "thank you for saying that. I felt the same way, but I was willing to shoot it for you, because I knew that was your favorite of the two endings." And it was, when I read it. But then doing it, it absolutely did not gel with who she was. It was a natural realization, and it came out of the work, instead of coming out of a decision of his or mine, or the group. But, it was a very complicated scene, and his being willing to take a very long night, with the amount of film and money it would take to shoot that scene, knowing full well that it wouldn't be the one used, but do it for me. That ­ that was beyond amazing and giving, and just spoke volumes about the kind of man he is and what kind of director he is."

And really, what more can you say in response but "wow". So I move on, and ask about her experience with the other actors, considering her decision to interact as little with them as possible.

"It was very cool to work with people that I didn't know. Because I had more leeway to do what I had to do, meaning have very anti-social behavior, in the sense that I did not "hang out". I did not have to bond. And whether it struck some of them as odd or offensive ­ and I doubt that it did, but it definitely had an effect on them. Afterwards -- it was very funny, because once someone was out of the movie, they were finished shooting, or had been killed ­ because we were pretty much for the most part shooting in sequence ­ so as soon as a character was no longer in the movie, I could then speak to them as a person, and I would get to know them a little bit. They were very supportive of that. It was a very cool situation where they were all friends in the movie, and they all lived there and they could hang out if they wanted to, before the movie to work on their characters, and I flew down from New York, and no one knew me and I was a big question mark, and it all just worked out in favor of the acting and the dynamics and the chemistry."

And her opinions of their abilities as actors? "I thought everybody was great. I really have to say, even though I may not have gotten to know everybody on a personal level, I was really impressed watching the dailies, by the level of acting. Everybody did a really nice job. Everybody was right on. Look at the character of "Tony" [played by Robert McCollum] in the party scene, he was just amazing. It was a Serpent and the Rainbow-kind of scene and he was right-on with that. His wife [Kristen McCollum], who actually played his wife in the movie, was very funny, a wonderful comedienne. Becky Stacey, who has the Psycho shower scene, she was perfect for that role, she really was very sweet. I thought Brandy [Little] had a lot of depth, and I thought she nailed that character right on. And Johnny Sneed ["Wayne"] was amazing. He had a tough role because he had to play a sensitive guy, [and] it was believable that he was with a woman who he allowed to take control, because of the two of them she was definitely the stronger character. And Kenyon Holmes, the guy who played "Bruce" ­ he was perfect. I mean, how much more perfect can you get for the character of "Bruce"? He was exactly it. So the casting was just another area where Jon just aced it."

And speaking of Brandy Little, the "buzz" around the set was that Debbie particularly, shall we say, terrorized Brandy, in much the same way that Jane focuses on Brandy's character of Jesse in the film. Some of the funnier stories from the other cast and crew members involved Debbie fixing Brandy with intense looks, peering at her from the shadows, staring at her until she was forced to leave the room. (This was in addition to other acts of psychological terrorism that Debbie enacted upon her fellow actors, such as letting the others know that she was walking around with pictures of each of them, on which to focus her ­ Jane's ­ hatred. All in the name of the performance.) In spite of herself, Debbie laughs when I mention her "special relationship" with Brandy.

"I didn't necessarily target her heavier," she says, "but Brandy, as an actress, made the choice to really use it the most. She made the choice to play the game with me that went on outside of the shoot. And so because she did, it was intensified. Because if energy is going one way, you're sort of "Oh, wow, that's interesting", but if you are feeding into the fire, you're making a bigger fire. So because she was playing the game, it was more intensified. There were days where she wasn't shooting and she would come by the set, and that was sort of awkward for me, but I think for the most part, she gave back the same "gifts" to me."

And what, ultimately, does she hope her role in American Nightmare accomplishes? "Probably the right answer would be "Oh, gee, well, now all these other people will hire me", well that's nice. But, really, I hope that the character is as engaging on film as it was for me playing her. And if it is, that is payback enough for me. I really feel as an artist that this is the thing, and if this can come off as intensely as the experience was to do it, then I will just be totally and absolutely satisfied." .