[IMG:L]Laffy Taffy. Pink lipstick. Boston Terriers. Backbends. Dr. Phil. The number five. Cuteoverload.com. Jane Austen. Angel: Honor Student By Day, Hollywood Hooker By Night. The Parent Trap. Characters with machine guns for legs.
Welcome to the fascinating, if not entirely consistent, world of Rose McGowan.
Hollywod.com: You have the rare distinction of being the only Grindhouse actor who appears in both Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof. When did you find out that you were going to be one of the people in both movies which was a rare honor here?
Rose McGowan: I auditioned separately, and I auditioned twice for Quentin while I was filming Planet Terror. And it was crazy because the first two months I was shooting Planet Terror I was finishing the last two months of the show I was on at the time, Charmed. So I was doing that during the day and then taking planes at night to Texas to shoot that all night, and then in the middle of that getting up to L.A. to audition for Quentin for a completely different part. I mean, they’re all completely different and completely schizophrenic, and so it was really pretty cool. What was great about it is that Quentin really endorsed the ideas of what I wanted my character to be. I wanted pale blonde hair, and I wanted a real 180 from Cherry, who I kind of made tan and exotic.
HW: How’d you find your way into the world of Rodriguez and Tarantino?
RM: I met Robert at Cannes two years ago…I was just saying in general that – not that there are no roles for women in movies, but that I’ve had a habit in the past of saying yes to films based on the male character, and once I got there I realized that I was not in fact the man. I was the girl and that was not the character that I liked, and that was too bad. Obviously, there are some movies where you really do need it to be a man, but then there were others where I just didn’t see why it couldn’t be a girl. So his mind kept clicking, and I think that he had about 20 pages, a skeleton of a movie that he had written about 10 years before, just ideas, and he went back and with that going it just came to him. So he started writing Cherry and I got a call one day and he said “Hey, this is Robert. I’m in traffic. I just thought of the best thing. She’s going to have a machine gun leg!” I was like “All right.” It wasn’t a big shock to me. I started laughing, and I kind of had an absurdist sense of humor. I’m not sure if I imagined it. I kind of did. It wasn’t one of those things where I was calling all of my people saying “What do you think? Do you think it is going to ruin my image?” These are also two of the best directors in the business.
[IMG:R]HW: The machine gun leg aside, Robert says there’s a lot of you in the character. How much?
RM: I would say a fair bit: “Useless talent.” I kept getting questions yesterday about what my useless talent is, and I said “Well, saying ‘Useless talent #77.’” I’ve been saying that since I was about 7 and that’s going in the movie. So in some form, I guess, that comes from me. But there are those certain things that I’m good at that would never make me any money in this lifetime. The things that I invest in seem to be things that don’t help my career and make me no money.
HW: Like?
RM: Backbends. Baking. Stupid little things that I’m quite good at like getting algae off of my tiles. Dumb things, random things. It’s like “Oh, you’re very good at that.” “Yes, I am. It will help me in no way in my lifetime. Thank you very much.”
HW: So Cherry’s backbends are all Rose?
RM: Oh, those are me. The majority of that was me and especially during the sequence and there was a point where I do a backbend and there was this camera – I’d not seen one like that before. It was so big – it was giant and it went around and under me. I’m also wearing five-inch heels, and so to hold that was hard. Of course I got nerve damage in my hand just doing the dumbest backbend when I was showing Marley [Shelton] that I can do it. It was the dumbest one and I now have not much feeling in two fingers. But it still looks good, and that’s what counts.
HW: This
RM:
HW: What was the first horror movie you saw that made you realize you didn’t like them?
RM: I saw Dawn of the Dead. I only saw 10 minutes…It was the old one, and I remember that I was sitting on a little cushion and one of the zombie things touched someone and I screamed and managed to do a back flip off the little cushion and that was it for me. I was done. But these are different. Robert was yelling at me in the theater because I kept hiding behind my hands, and he went, “You have to look at this!” I would look right when someone’s head gets blown open. “Ah, you bastard!”
HW: Why did it take this long to get in films by these guys? Honestly, you seem tailor-made for both of them.
RM: I kind of do, don’t I? Well, it’s funny, because Robert didn’t know I was on a TV show. And when he saw me at Cannes he was kind of like, “God, where did that girl go, and disappear?” And that would be essentially where I was. A lot of people do have, I guess, a bit more of a hiatus than we did, and there was never really enough of a hiatus to do anything. And always when I was on hiatus, there wasn’t a project going that I wanted to do. So I guess that would explain that. But then, you know, most actors, certainly, and actresses, would die to do a job with either one of them.
HW: Before the interview you mentioned how the press has gotten more and more inappropriate with the kinds of personal questions they ask – I’m sure you’ve gotten your share of requests to reveal intimate details – it’s how many people get and stay famous now.
RM: I think it’s gross. I won’t do the trade-off. No, I’ve had publicists say, you know, “If you feel like you’re dressed up cute one day, just call the paparazzi. We’ll call them for you, and they can come and take a photo.” I was like, “I’d rather slit my wrists. I’ll stay un-famous, thanks.” Just a certain soul-killer there. I think there’s a real art. You can get funny anecdotes away without telling everything, and that’s just like meeting somebody. The kind of interviews I like to read, when someone talks about their favorite number, color, dogs, or – anything like that. Because then I actually feel like I know the person more. Much more than giving kind of standard answers. Specifically if they’re promoting a film. Or specifically if they’re promoting a sucky film.
HW: So let’s go there – what kind of questions do you want to answer?
RM: I like Q&As. I like – or just, like, fill-in-the – you know, like a Proust questionnaire. Things like that. Those are fun. And my favorite color is green. And I have Boston terriers. And my favorite number’s five.
HW: Why is five your favorite?
RM: I love the curves. My birthday’s on the fifth. And the best birthday I had was when I was 5. It’s all gone greatly downhill since 5 years old.
[IMG:L]HW: What was great about that birthday?
RM: I think it was just really celebrated. And I have a bunch of brothers and sisters, so, you know, that kind of stopped. And I had a big headdress of the number five—this really elaborate headpiece with stars all over it, and a big number five. And it was in Italy, I remember. And I had a great little party. I just remember very specifically. But they do say [the number of] the day you were born on, that year [of your life] is supposed to be your “golden birthday.” So maybe I was just lucky that that worked out for me.
HW: Like Robert and Quentin, you have your own eclectic tastes in film, going all the way back to your childhood?
RM: When [my family] started doing the thing where each kid got to pick a different movie to watch, I was banned from ever picking again. Because everybody else was picking, you know, just regular movies. So when it was my turn, I was very attracted to – and maybe this would be a Grindhouse film, I think — Angel: Honor Student by Day, Hollywood Hooker by Night.
HW: Totally know that movie.
RM: I know!
HW: Who was the star of that? Donna Wilkes?
RM: I don’t know, some girl with brown hair. And that was my choice. And I was never allowed to choose again. I think I was about 11. So who knows how long that had been out.
HW: You seem like a girl who knows what she likes, quite definitively.
RM: I do, actually. And I’m quite definitive. I like cute animals. [Laughs] Spend a lot of time at Cuteoverload.com. I have a whole file on my computer of cute puppies. Mostly Boston terriers, I’m not gonna lie. I am a breedist. Yeah, I do, and obviously Robert and Quentin do, too. What I love about Quentin is that things he likes – you know, whether they’re low-brow or high-brow, he loves them unabashedly. He loves Charmed, and unabashedly. He’ll tell you all sorts of things about it that I don’t even know, or don’t remember. And I love that he doesn’t have any sort of embarrassment. And then again, there’s the pretentious people. “I don’t have a TV.” Oh, shut up. You’re probably at home watching stupid, like, MTV reality shows right now. Whatever. Oh yes, you’re staying home reading Dostoyevsky, just like all of us, I’m sure of it.
HW: What are the lowbrow tastes that you own fiercely?
RM: Oh, that I own fiercely? Well, Laffy Taffy. Massive consumption of Laffy Taffys. Like, to a bad level. My brother opened the car door the other day and there was an open giant bag of it and it fell out all over his feet. He’s like “That’s pathetic.” I like Dr. Phil. I like it when he yells at people. He’s fascinating. And his wife has so much plastic surgery. I saw some show where she was telling women they just need to age gracefully. I was saying, “What?!” And I saw one of the women who completely knew she had plastic surgery staring at her like, “Uh! Your face can’t move.”
HW: The movies we’ve seen you in since the end of Charmed seem to suit your image – these two films, and The Black Dahlia — in a way the show never quite did, you know?
RM: Well, but there’s a big misconception about me. You know, makeup companies send me boxes of red lipstick. I wear pink. And have light pink nail polish. I don’t wear red nail polish. I don’t – and no, actually, what I would really be suited to would be, like, a Jane Austen comedy of manners. That’s suited to me.
HW: Really? Not to pigeon hole you as dark and edgy, but you seem more adventurous in your choices than that kind of thing.
RM: I am very adventurous. But you know, there’s something about repressed English emotion that I just respond to. I just do.
HW: Did you just tear through those books when you first read them?
RM: Oh, tore. Tore, tore. But you know, again, going back to the “Why can’t a woman play the male character?” You know, it would be my dream to play the Count of Monte Cristo. Obviously I don’t think I would be able to. That book is about 1200 pages long, actually, but I could live in it forever. I could have just kept following around that character. And that would be a great character I’d love to play. People say, “Oh, what character do you want to play?” So many of them! I would have liked to have played Scarlett, but I would also love to play Rhett Butler. Sadly, I’ll never get the chance. That bums me out.
HW: I don’t know – Robert can do some pretty amazing things with digital cinema, so maybe you will.
RM: Maybe I can! Hmm hmm hmm! Yeah. Well, he and I both loved Parent Trap. And can quote so many different lines from it. So, we’re trying to think of something that we could do that would be the Haley Mills-esque, both characters.
HW: Has there been talk at all about finding a part for you in Sin City 2? You certainly seem to fit that world.
RM: [Smiles enigmatically] I cannot confirm.
HW: That sounds like a “yes.”
RM: No. I just like to smile.
