Former Disney star Ross Lynch goes very dark in film role

NEW YORK – Former Disney star Ross Lynch has taken on one of the toughest film assignments you can get - making a cannibalistic serial killer likable. The “Austin and Ally’’ star plays Jeffrey Dahmer in “My Friend Dahmer’’ as a high school student, long before he went on his murderous rampages. “Although you know he’s going to become a serial killer, it’s not hard to think of him as a human because he once was. And really, our film takes place at the time when he’s losing his humanity, when he’s becoming this monster.

So, we have to start with him with his humanity,’’ said Lynch. The 21-year-old actor admits he wasn’t familiar with Dahmer, who raped, murdered, and dismembered 17 men and boys. He died in prison in 1994.