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Rose McGowen
Interview - Movie: Maxim Magazine 1999

Hollywood's most untamed talent exploresthe joys of revenge, the pain of growing up
among naked Italians--and why she'd do Jennifer Lopez.
By Michael Kaplan

If you caught the MTV Video Music Awards last year, you were lucky enough to get mooned by Rose McGowan. She's the head-turner who made a now notorious entrance in a dress that was completely backless -- unless you count a coupla strings and a rhinestone. Sure she's wild, and definitely sharp, but Rose insists she's not all thorns, citing as evidence the cuddly lounging outfit she wears on the morning of our chat: a tank top and "old man's" pajama bottoms covered with hearts. And as we discovered, even though she specializes in playing big-screen vamps -- the gloomy goth in The Doom Generation, Neve Campbell's lippy pal in Scream, and the prom queen who asphyxiates one of her perfect friends with candy in the current Jawbreaker -- the real-life Rose is enough of a softy to take her boyfriend, shock-rocker Marilyn Manson, horseback riding in the park.
Maxim: The character you play in Jawbreaker, Courtney, is quite amazingly evil. Do you ever have moments like that?
Rose McGowan [laughs]: I'm a pussycat unless you do something to one of my friends. Then I'll think of unique ways to get back at you. I'm more creative than your average bear.
Maxim: For example?
RM: Well, I was out at a restaurant with a guy and his parents in Ohio, and this meathead, the only other customer there, was yelling nasty stuff at us. After dinner, we figured out which car was his and I smashed one of its windows with a rock. Then I called the police, gave them his coordinates, and told them he was extremely drunk and unwilling to relinquish his keys.
Maxim: Remind me not to cross you. But that's still nothing compared to the stuff Courtney comes up with. Does playing a nasty number like her get to you after a while?
RM: No, because I have a really strong dose of amorality in me. Fifty percent of me wants to be good and raise the bar on the evolutionary scale, and the other part wants to destroy everything. I'm sure if I lived back in Salem, I would have been burned at the stake.
Maxim: Well, you do look kind of witch when your hair's all wild.
RM: Strange thing is, when my hair is a giant mess, I get 30 percent more catcalls.
Maxim: Catcall of choice?
RM: You know that hissing sound that foreign guys make? I actually prefer that to honking horns and hollering. But probably my favorite come-on ever was when a guy suddenly walked up to me in a bar and said, "Hi. My name's Maverick. That's my call sign."

Maxim: Huh?
RM: It's a line right out of Top Gun -- a movie I love. I just turned to him and said, "Goose, you big stud! Take me now or lose me forever." He was in shock. I would have gone out with him just for his sense of humor.
Maxim: You once described yourself as "a man with really nice breasts." How so?
RM: I'm like a guy in the emotional sense. I don't like to talk about things. Discussing "where the relationship is going" makes me want to stick my head in the oven. The stereotypical woman is always trying to get a guy to call her -- like in those retarded magazines:
100 WAYS TO MAKE HIM LOVE YOU NOW.
Fuck that. When I'm done with someone, I'm done.
Maxim: Let's say you actually were a man. What kind of woman do you think you'd go for?
RM: Physically, the Jennifer Lopez big-girl type. Mentally, I'd want someone who is wickedly smart with a perverse sense of humor. If she had a nice rack, that'd be great, too.

Maxim: Back in your own body, what do you look for in a guy?
RM: Much the same thing -- without the rack. If he has something nice in his pants, that's a bonus but not a requirement.
Maxim: That nearly invisible dress you wore to the MTV Video Music Awards was a bonus for us. What were you thinking?
RM: I wore it to cause an uproar. But I'll confess that I did change into another dress after walking up the red carpet.
Maxim: I guess the first one was a bit much.
RM: More like too little. Plus, those little strands in the back would have give me griddle butt if I'd sat down. But I've worn outfits that are more risqué ... I remember one made from an American flag, with the stars cut out in highly strategic places.
Maxim: When you were quite young, you lived with your parents as members of a religious cult in Italy. What was the strangest part of growing up in that nuthouse?
RM: All these weirdo people were always running around naked. I remember seeing a lot of legs, but not a lot of faces. I still really dislike seeing naked people en masse.
Maxim: What would the kids you went to high school with think about your portraying a prom queen in Jawbreaker?

RM: When I lived in Europe, I was usually pretty exalted for the way I looked. I had minions who would run and get me candy. Those kids would say, "Right on!" But when I moved to Oregon and entered my goth phase with spiky black hair, kids threw things at me. Those people would laugh hysterically.
Maxim: You dyed your hair blonde for Scream. Did you have any more fun?
RM: It totally changed how people treated me. The outlaw-type guys who usually approach me suddenly didn't notice I existed, but your typical Middle American men loved me.
Maxim: You know that scene in Scream in which you get crushed to death by a garage door? Was that you or a stunt person caught in that little pet hatch?
RM: It was a real garage with a real door, and I went up and down it 20 times. It left me with big bruises all over my rib cage and my back, but I insisted on doing it myself because I think stunt doubles never really look like me. I have a real specific body.

Maxim: Name three things you'll never do as an actress.
RM: Hopefully, I won't be playing the five-minute part of somebody's mother. Hopefully, I won't be doing a Scream reunion 20 years from now -- you know, like Scream: The Undead. And I'll probably never do Hollywood Squares.
Maxim: When you're not working, what do you do for fun?
RM: Go to dinner, then invite weird friends back to the house for karaoke singing until five in the morning. I can't get enough of "Total Eclipse of the Heart."
Maxim: I bet you and Marilyn throw some pretty good bashes.
RM: The best was the surprise horse-riding party I threw him last year. In L.A., you can rent horses at night and ride through Griffith Park, then eat at a dive Mexican restaurant and drink too much. The funny thing is getting back on the horses. Some of the fellows from the Smashing Pumpkins were there -- it was all people you'd never expect to see on a horse. I made them all wear miniature plastic cowboy hats.
Maxim: I hear you have a morbid fish phobia. What's the deal?
RM: I hate them. They're disgusting.
Maxim: Do you eat them for revenge?
RM: No way -- I'd rather starve to death. I don't like fish on any level. I'm not saying it's logical. I'm just against them.
Maxim: Let's say you're stranded on a desert island. Would you rather eat a fish or your foot?
RM: I don't know. Do toenails have protein?

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