Rob Lowe just compared his 12-year-old co-star to some leading ladies like Allison Janney and Jodie Foster

Rob Lowe is no stranger to being the star on the TV screen, but the award-winning actor put on his director's hat to pull double duty and top billing for his latest project, a remake of "The Bad Seed."

Lowe decided to reinvigorate the 1950's cult classic film from the creepy kid genre and said he "thought it'd be fun to bring that into today's culture."

"Directing it was a dream and I'm really, really proud of how it turned out," Lowe said today on "Good Morning America."

Part of what Lowe is so excited about with this remake is the young lead actress who he said, "gives the performance of a lifetime in this."

"The original actress who played the bad seed was nominated for an Oscar, so we needed to find somebody worthy," he said.

Lowe gushed that his co-star McKenna Grace, 12, has incredible talent and compared her to an impressive list of other leading ladies.

"When I was acting with her, I felt like I was looking into the eyes of like a Jodie Foster or an Allison Janney or a Maggie Smith -- some of the great actors that I've worked with," he said.

Lowe said he had a very "specific" vision for the film so he combined his skills and put a personal touch from behind the scenes.

"The job of a director is to have a point of view that is so specific to you that the movie could not be made without it," he explained. "When I read [The Bad Seed] as an actor, I thought, 'I have such an idea for this movie,' I really want to do this and it's an ability for me at this point in my life to use all of the knowledge that I've built up over so many years of doing what I've been doing."

And he said those scenes that he could "just direct" were "the best."

"That was the best. Oh, my gosh. No makeup, no hair, just direct, -- when I had to direct myself, that was not my favorite. Turns out I'm very difficult to work with," he said laughing.

Another small personal touch of Lowe's in this film was an ode to S.E. Hinton's novel turned screenplay, "The Outsiders," which was also one of his earliest acting gigs.

"I put a little Easter egg for those 'Outsiders' fans in the movie. It turns out even the little bad seed likes to read S.E. Hinton," Lowe said of a book seen in the main character's bedroom.

"S.E. Hinton [was] a 13-year-old, 14-year-old girl in an era where girls couldn't write about men. And she had to change her name to S.E., that's why it's not Susie Hinton, and her story is amazing and that book's influence is still extraordinary."

"The Bad Seed" premieres Sunday night at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.