Some people say: 'Maude Apatow is my spirit animal'. They tweet it to me."

Over a coconut milk smoothie at Cafe Gratitude, the trendy vegan restaurant on Larchmont Boulevard, Maude was describing the intense fascination she has inspired on Twitter, where she has over 62,000 followers.

That may not compare to Lady Gaga's total, but considering she is a 14-year-old just out of braces , not a celebrity and not someone who has done anything outrageous on YouTube, it's an impressive fan base.

Of course, Maude, who has long chestnut-colored hair, a pale delicate frame and a face that is at once cherubic and knowing , is not a complete nobody. Her father is Judd Apatow, Hollywood's comedy king, whose imprimatur is on wildly successful comedies like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," which he wrote, directed and produced, and "Bridesmaids," which he produced.

And her mother is Leslie Mann, the blond, willowy actress who has starred in several of her husband's films, most notably "Funny People," in which she played the tempestuous ex-girlfriend of a comedian who finds out he has cancer. Maude was also in that film, along with her younger sister, Iris, playing the daughters of Mann's character, which they had done before in "Knocked Up."

But while Maude is natural and effervescently childlike on camera, she has made her real mark online. Especially Twitter, where both her Larry David-like social observations and straightforward teen musings have made her a successor to slightly older Twitter stars like Shelby Fero (75,000 followers) and Megan Amram (260,000 followers), who have both gone on to take up interesting jobs.

But Maude says she isn't thinking about a career. She said she is more worried about starting high school.

She has a similar healthy queasiness about the Internet love she receives in the form of hashtags, retweets and entire Tumblr pages devoted to her.

"It's just weird , because I don't know most people who tweet me, so it's kind of scary," said Maude, who quickly added, "But it's nice."

She traces her microfame to spring 2011, when she and her mother flew to London to watch Prince William and Kate Middleton marry.

"We were going to watch from the street, all the carriages, and I remember when I was on that trip, I got 1,000 followers, I was so excited," Maude said. "People were, like: 'Oh, my God! She's live-tweeting the royal wedding!"'

Another big bump came when Harry Styles, a member of the British boy band One Direction, tweeted Maude a happy birthday (she is, to put it mildly, a huge fan).

But in fact her following goes well beyond 21st-century bobby-soxers . Judy Blume, the novelist famous for her frank treatment of young adulthood (who is only slightly ahead of Maude, with 70,000 Twitter followers) is one of Maude's admirers.

"I had the same adolescent angst as Maude," Blume wrote in an email. "The same ennui. The same questions about life. I don't think that ever changes."

Not that Maude is a moper . Like her father, she finds humor in life's most awkward and unpleasant moments. Like when she tweeted, "I think I might get into a fistfight at this bar mitzvah."

When Maude expressed the thought aloud, she said that her father told her, "Tweet that, that's funny."

Apatow does not help her write these tweets, Maude said, but her parents sometimes correct her grammar and vet posts that she fears may offend someone.

Apatow does, however, frequently retweet his daughter's posts, and exchanges quips with her on the social media platform.

"We both started using Twitter around the same time and both compliment and insult each other's tweets," he wrote in an email from the family's recent vacation in Italy. "Sometimes we fight over Twitter. It could not be more unhealthy."

But it also gently hoisted Maude's profile. It was through Apatow's Twitter account that Sophia Rossi, a founder of the all-things-girlie website HelloGiggles, discovered Maude.

"She would keep doing these bits where she was fighting with her sister, and it just killed me," Rossi said. "This sounds weird to say, but I'm a 13-year-old inside, and when I read her tweets, it was like, 'Oh, my God, that sounds like something I would say!"'

Rossi, a practically decrepit 30, said that when she and her HelloGiggles partners, Zooey Deschanel and the TV writer Molly McAleer, were getting their site up and running, she told Deschanel, "I'm obsessed with Maude."

After receiving permission from Apatow and Mann, Rossi commissioned Maude to write something - anything - for HelloGiggles. Maude turned in an essay in which she described herself as "the awkward, slightly OCD, preppy, motherly, nerd who knew barely anything about being a 'regular teen."'

Teen Vogue also took note of Maude on Twitter and had her interview One Direction for the magazine's website. And when Rossi and her friend Lena Dunham invited Maude to go with them to a Taylor Swift concert, TeenVogue.com posted their live tweets from the show.

"We share a lot of interests - nail art, girl friendship dynamics," Dunham wrote, "and she's wise beyond her years while reminding us what it felt like to be fourteen."

Except that instead of camp or afternoons at the mall last summer, Maude and her sister were busy filming "This Is 40," a sequel of sorts to "Knocked Up," which follows the married couple played in that film by Mann and Paul Rudd.

Of working with her father, Maude said: "He won't tell us what the scene is until ... he'll give us the pages the night before. He wants it to be as natural as possible. He doesn't want it rehearsed."

The process is not always serene. While on set, Maude tweeted, "My dad just screamed at me during the scene, 'MAUDE! LOOK LIKE YOU'RE ENJOYING LIFE!!!"'

And what about Maude's performance, so to speak, online?

"I think she has begun to find her voice," he wrote, "and I know that having people respond positively has made her want to write more. I just hope that ultimately what she writes is longer than 140 characters."

GLOSSARY

1. trendy: de moda

1. braces: aparell d'ortodòncia

2. frame: constitució

3. knowing: savi

4. willowy: esvelt

5. straightforward: senzill

6. musing: meditacions

7. queasiness: malestar

8. weird: estrany

9. to trace: seguir el rastre

10. bump: impuls

11. booby-soxer: noia adolescent

12. angst: angoixa

13. moper: persona malenconiosa

14. awkward: incòmode

15. fistfight: baralla

16. to vet: controlar/examinar

17. quip: broma

18. to hoist: elevar

19. to turn in: presentar

20. barely: a penes

21. wise: savi

EXERCISE 1

Find the words in the text that mean the following.

1. A fan, especially on Twitter.

2. A famous person.

3. Shocking and excessive.

4. Mark or print.

5. In the style of a prep-school student.

6. A person lacking social skills.

EXERCISE 2

Fill in the following sentences with the correct words.

1. She played the ex-girlfriend of a comedian who finds o__ he has cancer.

2. Sometimes we fight o__ Twitter.

3. I'm obsessed w__ Maude.

4. She's wise b___ her years.

ANSWERS

EXERCISE 1:

EXERCISE 2:

1. out / 2. over / 3. with / 4. beyond