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Rose McGowen
Interview - The Face Interview
Rising Vamp
By David Keeps
Born in a barn. Raised by a religious cult. Drugs. Rehab. Murder. After all
that Rose McGowan could only be a Hollywood actress. But if you think she's
weird, then you should see her boyfriend.
With a "fuck", Rose McGowan's acting career was born. It's the first
word she utters in juvenile delinquent auteur Gregg Araki's 1995 Sundance
breakthrough, The Doom Generation. Over the course of the twisted road movie
(finally released in the UK this month after an inexplicable delay), she spits
it out as a verb, noun, adjective, and sociological diagnosis. As Amy Blue,
Doom's teenage speed freak toiletmouth mantrap with a severe black bob, vampire
white skin, and blood red lips, McGowan retooled the suburban California girl
as a noir nymphette. Her scene-stealing performance caught the eye of Wes
Craven, who cast her as Tabitha, the blonde bombshell who gets lippy with
a killer and loses her head in an automatic garage door in Scream. Rose has
since unleashed an old-school sexpot electricity in a host of films(Biodome,
Phantoms, Going All The Way,
Lewis & Clark & George) that you'll probably never see. Not that it
matters. Rose McGowan is just one great role away from international movie
stardom. And she has already secured her rightful place in the tabloids due
to her romance with rock antichrist superstar Marilyn Manson. They met ten
months ago, and have been together ever since. Though she keeps a place of
her own, Rose invites me up to spend a Sunday afternoon at maison Manson,
a lovely, pastoral hilltop bungalow in the Hollywood Hills. Here Rose's two
gassy Boston terriers, Bug and Fester, romp around the yard, her friend Amanda
e Cadenet splashes in the pool, and musicians filter in and out of Manson's
home studio. The man they call Marilyn ambles over, wearing a
Seventies T-shirt and candy-coloured shades. He's nice, not even remotely
scary. "My ex-girlfriend made the mistake of renting The Doom Generation
and telling me what a great actress Rose was," he says
with a smile and a Midwestern drawl. "Rose is the only girl I'd ever
get married to, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only man she would marry."
"Isn't my boyfriend the cutest?" Rose asks me. The happy couple
will appear together in an upcoming indie film called Jawbreaker, a dark comedy
about a group of school
chums who accidentally kill one of their friends. Rose also appears as a drunken
mess in Southie, a drama starring Donnie Wahlberg. "Someone sent me a
script the other day and it had a cover letter saying (adopts patronising
tone), 'This is a bit different from some of the other things you've done.'
Yeah, well screw you, dickhead." Yes, she can be thorny. But tucked into
an oversize chair, hiding her pale complexion from the sun under a big black
hat, Rose McGowan looks more like a porcelain doll. She apologises, unnecessarily,
for fatigue. Even under the worst of circumstances, Rose is unfailingly quick-witted
and flirtatious. Rose McGowan made her entrance September 5, 1974, birthed
by a midwife in a barn in Italy. She was raised in the Children
of God, a post-hippie religious cult that did a lot of missionary work. She
modelled in European. children's fashion magazines ("mostly as a boy,
because my hair was short; not only was I being marketed, they were messing
with my gender"), and as a way of proselytising for the Children of God,
she and the other children sang in the streets and for terminally ill kids
in hospitals. When Rose was ten, her father took off with one of the group's
child-minders, and her mother brought Rose and her five siblings back to the
States, settling in Eugene, Oregon. Always a bit rebellious, Rose took drugs,
got "kidnapped" and put in rehab, escaped, lived on the streets,
and hung out in Portland's gay clubs, bouncing back and forth between her
folks and her posh aunt who "looked like one of those Robert Palmer 'Addicted
To Love' girls" and owned a hair salon in Seattle.
Rose listened to Joy Division, ushered in a cinema, went to several beauty
schools, and eventually followed a boyfriend to LA. The day she arrived, the
police had roped off his apartment; someone had broken in the night before
and killed him. "I was pretty much hanging on by a shred t that point,"
she recalls. "it was the first big death in my life. You know how you
can walk down the street and see a person with a certain look on their faces,
like the wind is whistling between their eyes, and know they're a grief-stricken
zombie. I was that person." One day not so long after that shock, she
was persuaded by a friend of Gregg Araki's to audition for The Doom Generation.
It was a perfect fit. "that was totally me at 15. Really hard-shelled
and angry, which is usually because you have too much pain and no way to process
it." Since then, she has acquired a navel ring, a tattoo of a pin-up
on her right shoulder, a rabid male following, and a reputation as an actress
who breathes fire into every role she tackles."I could still safely retreat
into obscurity," Rose demurs. Don't believe it.
I
heard a good story about how you met your boyfriend.
"I was at this really stupid S&M theme restaurant in New York called
La Nouvelle Justine where I had to endure watching fat New Jersey people in
khaki pants getting spanked by some cute waiter. So I had a foot slave who's
rubbing my feet and he says, "This old friend of mine from Florida has
a really big crush on you. Do you know who Marilyn Manson is?" Three
months later in LA at a screening of Gummo that I was late for and locked
out of, I was out there cussing and kicking the door, and Manson came out.
And here we are...happy with two dogs."
Do
you ever feel like a lesbian calling out Marilyn during sex?
"That's a stupid question. And I don't call him Marilyn. He has this
real calm demeanor so I call him Doctor - that's my nickname for him. People
always go (in a yobbo voice): "Hey, who puts their lipstick on first?"
Neither of us has eyebrows. My boyfriend shaves his. I plucked mine and they
never grew back. Someone asked me the other day, what happened to both you
guys' eyebrows. I said the Gallagher Brothers have them."
So,
did you feel blessed being one of the Children of God?
"Yeah, right. Like many things, I'm sure they started out with good intentions.
Meanwhile they're all having sex with each other and going out and getting
men drunk and luring them into the cult. They call it flirty fishing. Gross.
A lot of kids disappeared. I could be sweeping Ghadaffi's doorstep right now.
I can't seem to escape strange Christians with weird beliefs. This girl showed
up on the set of Jawbreaker and the next thing I know she turns up at my house,
with two little black-and-white Boston Terriers, drives the exact same car
as I do, has these same exact shoes that I have on right now and from there
she tried to induct me into Scientology. I wanted to, like, exorcise my home
afterwards."
Do you have fond memories of your modelling career?
"I remember them teaching me how to throw up when I was nine. It was
for the cover of this food magazine and they kept making me eat chocolate
cake. I started crying and this assistant took me into the bathroom and showed
me how to throw up. (caustically) It's always good to learn those little things.
Especially if you want to develop an eating disorder. I was a paranoid child.
I never picked my nose because I was sure people were following me with cameras.
I've always had obsessions. For a year I couldn't read anything without immediately
reading it backwards. Even now, I'll be late and people think it's me being
an asshole, like "Oh, what frock shall I wear? 2, but I have to pick
up all the lint between my wall and my carpet before I go. But it's fun getting
rid of those obsessions."
How do you do it?
The lobotomy helped. I have this anger about describing my life to a therapist
ad I don't want to pay money to be irritated. But
it's paying off. I am a scion of mental health.
There was a time when people thought otherwise. The first time I did acid
was at the eight-grade dance. I believe they were playing Bon Jovi, and Skipper
Tate was the boy I liked, but who didn't like me. I did acid to be cool and
found myself in the middle of this filed surrounded by stoner rocker girls
who wanted to kick my ass for being alive, but I think I freaked them out
because I didn't speak. The only thing I said in the next 48 hours was "Fuck
you" to my mother. I got put in a rehab. The guy she was married to thought
that because I listened to The Cure and looked funny, I must be on drugs.
What was your look back then?
"Punk-goth-Mod. I'd ride on people's Vespas listening to Bauhaus and
I'd be piercing my nose in the bathroom. I had chopped-off black hair and
wore Revlon Love That Red lipstick. Every guy at school came up to me and
said: "You're the ugliest thing I've ever seen." My mom lived in
Oregon, a hellish place. Guys would try to run me over. I was walking down
the street and somebody threw a jar full of chewing tobacco spit over me.
that stuff seeps through the cracks, but basically the thing that got me through
those years was knowing that - and this could be delusion - it was a badge
of honour to be abused by them."
How
did you end up living on the streets?
I escaped from rehab. I was all about speed and dancing. It did keep me from
getting into sex, because I didn't want any when I was on drugs. It's a strange
chastity belt. I remember being on acid on the Oregon coast in January, which
is fuckin' freezing, and thinking the ocean is really far away - the next
thing I was neck deep in water. After that I went to live with my aunt. I
was really humiliated when I found her Lysoling the bathroom after I'd been
in there. (singing) "Memories, all alone in the moonlight…"
You apprenticed in the art of coiffure.
I
am a licensed beautician. I can give you an old lady perm. But I discovered
I don't like old people, they scream and they want to look like Liz Taylor
when they only have three hairs on their head.
Would you like to be a director some day?
No,
they get asked so many questions. Like where to plug in the coffee pot. I
could really give a shit.
Any other career plans?
I've
become obsessed with becoming a forensic pathologist. Being a Virgo, I'd be
very good at it. And it would be giving dead people a voice, if they've been
killed in a not-so-good way.
Ever seen a corpse?
Oh yeah, my friend used to live on top of a funeral home. I used to watch people get cremated. They puff up really big before they explode. Don't get cremated if you care about it being your ashes in the urn. They just shovel some out from a pile in the corner.
Scary.
Tell me, after doing so many horror films, what makes you gag?
Porno movies scare me. people that are desperate for certain kinds of sex
scare me. like people that could only get it off if they get peed on. God
bless them, but I wouldn't want to have to work so hard. And I'll walk out
of movies if they have birth scenes, they make me sick. Do you know you automatically
poop after you have a baby. Sorry, that's disgusting. I'm the person who hides
their toilet paper under everything else in the grocery basket. Frankly I'd
rather change the subject.
Oh, come on now…
I
don't like any bodily word. Like urethra, that's a disgusting word. I can't
stand when people just toss the P-word around.
You can strip off in movies, but you can't say the common names for our uncommon
parts.
Well, nether regions encompasses the whole thing. I would never say, "I
wanna suck your dick." I'd say, "You're a dickhead." The other
day I insulted somebody terribly by discussing circumcision. This is a British
magazine, I probably shouldn't go on; I'd be insulting the whole country.
But I've never come across any uncircumcised men. Actually except for Manson,
my boyfriends have always been Jewish.
I noticed you had major nipple erections in your big scene in Scream.
Gosh. Now my face is read. that's embarrassing. It's only when it's 90 degrees
that I don't have that. I have very reactive headlights.
What tickles you?
Retarded things. The other day I was driving down the street and there was
this row of trash containers, and there was this strange little Japanese woman
waiting patiently next to them. And I said, "Look, honey, they're throwing
away a perfectly good Japanese woman."
Would you ever play a superhero? Maybe a cross between Wonder Woman and Lex
Luther. Bald with big tits. And some good bracelets.
What would a McGowan rose be like?
Egads. You like coming up with your fruity questions doncha? It would be hot
pink and smell like Fracas, this French perfume I've worn since I was 14.
You don't know how often guys say, "You smell just like a rose."
To which I say, "You look just like a dipshit."
Ever looked like it yourself?
At my 21st birthday party. I was nervous, I didn't eat anything, I drank a
bottle of champagne within five minutes. I danced with a really old man with
no teeth….and then I passed out. I remember being in the back of the
ambulance, looking up and thinking, "This is stupid, they should tint
these windows." I don't want to be dying and looking at a fucking J&J
King Of Beepers Billboard on my way to the grave, thank you. Then I wake up
surrounded by agents, lawyers, friends, and this nurse looking at me like
I'm the biggest idiot that ever lived. I'm like, "Where am I?" She's
like, "They took you to the wrong hospital….you're in the children's
Aids ward." How stupid could you feel? These kids are dying of something
that's out of their control, and there's some dipshit with glossy hair in
an evening gown.
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Rose McGowen Interview - The Face Interview by David Keeps
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