Pop Goes The News — Jacob Tremblay, who turned 10 last month, says there’s no real secret to calling up the range of emotions his characters show in dramas like Room and thrillers like Before I Wake.

“To get myself happy I have to think a lot of happy thoughts. To get sad I have to think about sad stuff,” he said, sitting inside a luxury hotel in Cabo San Lucas.

“To get myself mad I have to pretend like that I hate this person so I kind of have to stay away from them for awhile — a few scenes before.”

All these emotions come out of Tremblay’s character Wes Firth in Burn Your Maps, which is having its Mexican premiere Saturday at the Los Cabos International Film Festival.

It is an inspirational film about a boy who tells his parents — who are dealing with marital problems following the death of their infant daughter — that he believes he is a Mongolian goat-herder.

While his dad (Marton Csokas) is having none of it, mom (Vera Farmiga) takes him to Mongolia, where she makes some discoveries of her own.

The film, which had its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, will be released in cinemas next month.

Tremblay said his favourite part about making the film was being able to ride horses in Alberta’s Kananaskis Country, which stood in for Mongolia.

“I learned how to ride horses, and that was fun,” he told Pop Goes The News. “I got to ride horses on top of the Rocky Mountains, and the view is beautiful — but I’m used to that.”

Tremblay knows mountain views because he was born and still lives in the Vancouver area with parents Jason and Christina and two sisters.

He made his first movie — Montreal-shot The Smurfs 2 — when he was only five years old but the world really got to know Tremblay upon the release of Room, which he made at the end of 2014 in Toronto.

The role earned him dozens of honours, including a Canadian Screen Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.

Tremblay has since made movies in New York and Alabama but mostly finds projects that are shot in Canada.

He recently wrapped production in Vancouver on Wonder, in which he plays a boy living with a facial deformity. Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson play his parents.

WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW to find out what Jacob Tremblay had to say about working at home, how often he gets recognized in Vancouver, his favourite video games, and getting to do a Star Wars film.

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Pop Goes The News is a guest of the Los Cabos Film Festival. Follow @jrk_media on Twitter for highlights throughout the festival and follow @jrk_media on Instagram for photos.