Rose McGowan spent her earliest childhood within a fringe Christian cult in Italy and her teenaged years struggling against false accusations of drug use that saw her briefly committed to a mental institution. At the age of 15, she was emancipated from her parents, and eventually graduated from high school and gained a beauticians license.
However, in 1995, McGowan began her acting career and received many early accolades for her quirky performances, despite giving them in films like "Bio-Dome" and "Encino Man". When she was cast in Wes Craven's "Scream," McGowan seemed destined for horror movie stardom... but then she entered a romantic relationship with Rob Zombie.
Although she continued to appear in leading roles throughout the rest of the 1990s--including chillers "Phantoms" and "The Last Stop"--very little notice was paid to them, as she was defined first and foremost as "Rob Zombie's girlfriend,"
Once they split, however, McGowan's stat began to ascend again, and she burst back into public consciousness with a starring role as a young witch in the television series "Charmed" and two roles in the retro horror double-feature "Grindhouse", one in "Death Proof" and the lead in "Planet Terror".
McGowan's latest role is in the new film adaptation of "Conan the Barbarian" as a particularly perverted villainess who really loves her daddy. (My guess is that relationship would be Roman Polanski's favorite part of the film.)
I was not captured by her early cultish appeal in those first few movies - but she jumped onto my radar with Scream - a solid performance in a fine film - and what a great outfit she wears in her final scene in the movie...stupid garage door! That she then started dating Marilyn Manson took her completely out of my universe - as though she never existed. (And that Manson later dated Evan Rachel Wood, a young woman I've known since she was about 8 when we both worked on the CBS series American Gothic - well that hurts more than I can tell you. But I digress.) Ms. McGowan came back into my world when I was one of the apparently only 47 people to see Grindhouse in the theater. Now there was a performance that will stand the test of time - it definitely had leg! Great choice, Steve!
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