There are certain tacit rules in Young Hollywood. To wit : if you're cast in a teen bloodbath like "Halloween: Resurrection" and your character is a computer geek named Myles, you can expect to expire before the third act. And if you somehow manage to survive the wrath of homicidal wraith Michael Myers, you keep that fact to yourself.

But Ryan Merriman is one Young Hollywood type who doesn't play by the rules.

"I just bring out the coolest in Myles," he cracks in a languid Oklahoma drawl, "so I make it through, believe it or not."

Other idiosyncratic things about this 19-year-old : He's an abstemious Christian who will do a slasher flick but not an adolescent sex comedy ("They're funny, but I'm not going to be having sex with an apple pie"), he'd just as soon build houses with his father as he would act ("It's a dying skill, actually"), and he's not afraid to critique the actor who won the Clark Kent role he once coveted on the WB's "Smallville" ("He is too pretty").

Ryan Merriman in Veritas

Merriman's attitudes may be unfamiliar, but you've probably seen his face before. From 1996-2000, he played a child super-genius on NBC's "The Pretender." He also starred as Michelle Pfeiffer's abducted son in 1998's big-screen weeper "The Deep End of the Ocean," and essayed a hormonal Bronx teen in the '99 indie "Just Looking." More recently, Merriman has fronted family-friendly fare like "Smart House" and "The Luck of the Irish," which he proudly proclaims as "the two top-selling movies ever for The Disney Channel."

But everyone has to grow up sometime.

In addition to his current role alongside rapper Busta Rhymes and Jamie Lee Curtis in the eighth installment of the "Halloween" franchise, Merriman will probe alien abductions in December's "Taken," a Sci-Fi Channel miniseries executive-produced by Steven Spielberg. And in ABC's mid-season replacement series "Veritas" (Latin for "the truth"), he'll shift to Indiana Jones mode as a boarding school brat who helps his archaeologist dad protect ancient artifacts from an evil cabal. Oh, yeah and next month, he'll play a marine biologist in "A Ring of Endless Light," his final Disney TV-movie.

Clearly, Merriman is on a roll. But with a breezy familiarity that's equal parts down-home charm and youthful bravado, he pauses to share the credit.

"God just put me in the right place, man -- right place, right time. It's kind of like a snowball effect, you know? If you take a snowball [and] throw it down a mountain, it's eventually going to wind up an avalanche, and that's kind of like what it's been."

He got that snowball rolling at age 8, when his aunt, who owned a performing arts studio, encouraged him to try local theater. That led to commercials and, in 1993, a role on the ABC sitcom, "The Mommies."

But Merriman is less eager to recount his past than he is to talk up current accomplishments -- personal as well as professional. He's dating an Oklahoma State pom-pom girl, and before hitting Toronto next month to shoot "Veritas," he'll log some serious hours in the gym. At 6 feet 1 inch tall and a solid 165 pounds, Disney's chubby-cheeked cherub of yesteryear is ready for his action-hero close-up.

"God just put me in the right place, man -- right place, right time. It's kind of like a snowball effect, you know? If you take a snowball [and] throw it down a mountain, it's eventually going to wind up an avalanche, and that's kind of like what it's been."

"It's weird how I just totally morphed. Everybody can't believe how old I look and, you know, as they would say, "handsome." His voice constricts as he coughs out the word. "I went from a young kid to a young man, basically. In 'Veritas,' I've got the shirt off, running around (doing) action stuff. It's crazy!"

Ryan Merriman in "Halloween : Resurrection"