She reads Harry Potter and "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." Her favorite actor is Johnny Depp. And when she's not in school or at acting rehearsals, she's likely to be in deep conversation with friends ... on the Internet.

Chloe Amos may sound like your average 12-year-old, but don't be fooled.

For starters, she's not "in luv" with Depp; she admires him as a fellow actor: "I started liking him when I saw 'Edward Scissorhands,' because I loved how he just showed so much emotion from his face, and not so much from words."

More importantly, the Mililani wunderkind has already built the resume of someone three times her age. She may be the busiest actress in town.

This year alone, Chloe has sung and danced through "Honk" at the O'ahu Arts Center, and "Beauty and the Beast" at Mililani High School; acted in a principal role for a local feature film ("All for Melissa," also starring Andy Bumatai); and is opening this summer in the Hawai'i Shakespeare Festival's "King John"; Kumu Kahua Theatre's "Kamau"; and as Dorothy in the O'ahu Arts Center's "Wizard of Oz."

WALKING THE WALK

Chloe, born in Hawai'i, lives in Mililani. She discovered her passion for acting in a Susan Page Modeling School summer course.

"My mom signed me up," she explained, "because she wanted me to stop walking like a boy."

Chloe loved the course's acting segment and begged parents Alan Amos and Allyn Tabata for more acting classes. So when opportunity knocked in the form of auditions for Hawai'i's World Talent agency, Chloe answered — and got the nod.

"It was a really good experience," she says, in that the agency brought in casting directors and agents from elsewhere, giving her valuable audition practice.

"The best part about acting is you can be someone you wouldn't normally get to be in real life," Chloe remarks. "Like in 'Kamau,' I can be this character who has attitude and is kind of sassy to her uncles and even her mom sometimes, and in real life I could never get away with that."

Cue her real-life mother Allyn's knowing laughter.

'A REAL PRO'

Chloe's fellow actors and teachers are the first to comment on her maturity.

"She's a real pro," comments Kumu Kahua artistic director Harry Wong. "She can do something a lot of actors find hard. ... If I say, 'Hey, that worked really well, could you do it again?' — without any questions asked, she just does."

Dusty Behner, who plays Chloe's character's mother in Kumu Kahua's current "Kamau," agrees. "She doesn't have to be told more than once, like some of us other 'seasoned' actors. We get into a way of doing it, and it's difficult to change. She's fresh."

Behner cites Chloe's professionalism and natural instincts for roles and characters to explain her impressive bookings: "People just grab her up."

BOLD CHOICES

But it's not all fun and games for the young actress, who admits an aversion to "blocking" (the painstaking plotting-out of the action for the play's scenes).

She adds, "The hardest thing I've noticed right now is reading into a character ... trying to figure out who they are, and what some of their past experiences have been that might have caused them to act the way they are now."

Like any solid actor, Chloe scans scripts for clues to her characters' motivations. But sometimes, she says, "You have to make your own bold choices and hope it works." Spoken like a pro.

Wong, who co-directs Chloe in "Kamau," says Chloe has "honesty" when it comes to her art.

He tells how, at one audition, she performed a perfectly natural, emotionally charged scene, but afterward worried that she wouldn't be so natural every time if she got the role.

"It's true," Wong reflects. "You know, actors work their entire life to develop the technique to do that, and then get to the end and say, 'Well, sometimes that's not gonna happen.' Already at this age, at 12, she realizes it."

YELLOW BRICK ROAD

What's next? Chloe hopes her upcoming enrollment in Myron B. Thompson Academy, a charter school that provides Internet-based distance learning, will allow more auditions. Someday, she hopes to take her talents back to Los Angeles (which she's already tried, briefly).

But first things first. Says Chloe, "Right now my plans, in my mind, are to first finish school, and then go to college in L.A., and then live there and see if I can get any jobs."

Wong hopes she continues in "straight" (versus musical) theater: "There's something to continually finding truth through regular theater that actors should always try and maintain. ... I hope Chloe keeps finding those avenues."

If she does, Wong says, she'll realize every actor's dream: to make a living by acting.

But not yet. "Sometimes," Chloe says, "just for fun I'll read silly books that aren't intellectual at all — just because, you know, I'm a kid."