17-year-old Kate Melton has her dream fulfilled.  As a life-long fan of Scooby Doo, the actress spent many a Halloween dressed up as her favourite character from the series - now she gets to play Daphne for real! CLINT MORRIS talks to the star of the latest live-action ‘'Scooby Doo'' film, ‘'Scooby Doo : The Mystery Begins'', about channelling her inner teen-detective. So how did you get the role? I'd heard about the auditions, and had a chance to get in on them, so thought I might as well go and do it! About five or six hours later I found out that I booked it! It was a dream come true, quite frankly. Were you a fan of Scooby Doo? Oh definitely - I've been obsessed with Scooby Doo all my life. I have Scooby Doo colouring books.... I even used to dress up as Daphne for Halloween. It was a fantasy to be a part of the movie. Did you watch the cartoons in preparation for the audition? To be honest, no, because I'd watched it my entire life and knew everything there was to know about Scooby Doo. I was so ready! But when I booked it, I watched a ton and ton and ton of [Scooby Doo] cartoons. And you watched the previous films as well? I did. I watched the two theatrical films. They're great. I had them on DVD so it was easy just to pull them out at any time and play them in my theatre room whenever I wanted to. Did you base your performance on Daphne on the cartoon more so than Sarah Michelle Gellar's performance in the previous films? Yeah, because Sarah Michelle Gellar did such a great job I didn't think it was fair to just copy her and imitate her. I based my performance more on the original 1960s Daphne. Your co-stars tell me it was a little bit difficult working with Scooby - how did you find him? It was definitely something I'd never experienced before; it was so strange. You might as well have been acting opposite a stick. In fact, some of the time that's exactly what you were doing - talking to a stick with a ball on the end of it. It felt silly, but you have to commit to it one hundred percent. The other three [actors] were there doing the same thing, so that made me feel better about it. Less embarrassing. You said you'd always been a fan of Daphne. Are you anything like Daphne? We definitely have quite a few similarities. She's confident, sincere... and I'd say I share the same traits. How was it working with your human co-stars? It was absolutely fantastic. They are three of my closest friends. Even though we're done filming we still all go to lunch and the movies together. We go shopping together. We all bonded right from the start. And you were all at Comic-Con? That was a crazy experience! It was quite overwhelming, not only because I'd never been, but because there were all these people there. It was such a wonderful experience but yeah, I definitely needed some time out [Laughs]. Did you screen the movie there? Yeah we did. And we did an autograph session for about an hour and then we did a panel discussion - it was so awesome to have everyone ask questions about the movie, because it showed they were interested, and having put so much work into it it was nice to see that people were excited and interested in the film. I'm hearing rumours of a sequel? Um...It's been talked about. They don't tell me anything though. I'm on a strictly need-to-know basis. But you'd love to play Daphne again? I'd love to play Daphne for years to come! Have they got you locked down to play her for a while yet? I believe I'm onboard two more. I wouldn't be surprised if they spin it off into a new live-action TV series. That's what people have been saying on the Internet, too. I tell ya, I would play Daphne in anything and everything for as long as they'll have me. I don't think there's ever actually been a live-action Scooby TV series I don't think so either, and it's a fabulous idea! I hope the powers-that-be are reading this interview right now!