Yes, "Goosebumps" is a movie based on kid's books. And, yes, Jack Black says, playing author R.L. Stine was a "really fun role" in a story about "forgiveness and not letting your rage and thirst for revenge control you."

"But it’s also about how some of those darker emotions can be used to create great masterworks," the actor acknowledges to Parade magazine. "I play a guy with a dark past and a brilliant mind, wrestling with his own demons, literally.”

For Black, this is not a stretch. He recalls his own troubles as a teenager in the years his parents divorced when he struggled with substance abuse and other problems.

“I remember just lots of turmoil from that time period,” he says. “I was having a lot of troubles with cocaine. . . . I was hanging out with some pretty rough characters. I was scared to go to school [because] one of them wanted to kill me. I wanted to get out of there.”

Now a married father of his own two young kids, Black says he turned his life around with the help of a school counselor and a new addiction -- acting.

“I like to act, to get up and put on a show," he says. "When I come off a stage or a set after a good scene where I felt like I connected with something emotional and real, I can’t go to sleep that night. It really is a drug unlike anything else. When you get it, when you connect, it is that adrenaline rush of the game. It’s electric.”

"Goosebumps" hits theaters Oct. 16. Check out the trailer below:

https://youtu.be/7Cn716jv61s