When Hispanic actress Vivis Colombetti (know simply as Vivis) found out about the character she would be portraying in the film “Paranormal Activity 2,” a prequel of the original 2007 thriller, she knew exactly where she would find inspiration for the role.

In the film, Vivis plays Martine, a nanny and housekeeper who tries to warn the family she works for about the evil spirits inhabiting their home. To protect them from the entities, Martine uses the same traditional healing and cleansing practices Vivis remembers her grandmother doing when she was a little girl.

“My grandmother was sort of a curandera-type person,” Vivis told EXTRA during a phone interview to discuss the DVD and Blu-ray release of “Paranormal Activity 2” on Feb. 8. “She cured us with nothing but herbs. We didn’t use medicine. We weren’t raised that way.”

During our interview, Vivis, who has starred in such films as “Gas, Food, Lodging,” “Mi Vida Loca,” and “Rent,” talked about how her grandmother’s cultural beliefs have influenced her life and what she thinks about the always-present spirit world.

EXTRA: The first time I saw this movie in the theater, I thought, “Oh, no. Bad things are going to happen to this family because they’re not listening to the Latina!”
Vivis: I know, I was so devastated! She knows there is something horrible in the house and she keeps warning them. That’s why she keeps cleansing the house. She burns things to send away evil spirits. In one of the early treatments of the script, it read that Martine had left behind all kinds of weird paraphernalia. But I thought, “She would never leave anything behind.” All of the pieces she carries around with her are very dear to her. Later, they changed [the script] to make Martine ...