By Daniel Howard Cerone.
TV Guide February 08-14, 1997 Issue. © TV Guide. Reprinted without permission
Donated by: Robb’s Party of Five Page!
This cold, rainy Sunday morning finds Neve Campbell sinking into her puffy, white couch, sipping a mug of coffee. As she stares into the fire, she dredges up a painful memory: her worst Valentine’s Day.
campbell’s coup
“Oh!” says the disarmingly open actress, remembering an incident when she was 9. “We had this awful thing at school where we had cookies on Valentine’s Day, and every student could buy them and send them to other class members.”
She erupts in tremulous laughter. Whenever a tough subject arises, Campbell, who masterfully portrays teenage angst as Julia on Fox’s Party of Five (Wednesdays, 9 P.M./ET), giggles as if in an attempt to render it harmless.
“They would call up each student every time their name came out of the box,” continues Campbell, whose first name (sounds like Bev) is an altered pronunciation of her Dutch mother’s maiden name. ‘I wasn’t called up …. Wait, I was called up once because the teacher gave me a cookie. I was devastated. No one would spend five cents to send me a cookie.”
That little girl has grown into a fascinating study of contrasts, marked by both success and insecurity. While many her age have just finished college the 23-year-old former ballerina has a husband, a house, and a TV series that’s a hit with young viewers. Not to mention a movie career that’s heating up fast-her current movie “Scream,” already among the 10 highest-grossing horror films ever, comes on the heels of last year’s teen-witch black comedy ‘The Craft,” which opened No. 1 at the box office. And to top it all off, she’s hosting NBC’s Saturday Night Live this week (February 8).
“Scream” costar Courteney Cox zeroes in on Campbell’s appeal. “She had an extremely hard part in this movie, to be on the verge of fright and tears throughout, and to keep it so interesting and real at the same time,’ says the star of NBC’s Friends. “She could do it because she’s grounded. She’s a centered human being.”
Adds Lacey Chabert, 14, who plays younger sister Claudia on Party of Five, “She always goes for the complex, unpredictable thing, and I admire her for it.”
Keeping it real may lie at the heart of Campbell’s acting ability. But underneath it all, pushing her forward, lurks a fragile soul who suffered a breakdown at 14, cracking under the stress of her elite dance school in Toronto. “I remember when I realized how important it was for her to be on-stage,” says her brother, Christian, 18 months her senior. Their father, a drama teacher, was directing a high-school production of ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’ and had created a role for Christian, then 10.
“I came into the living room all dressed up in my little costume,” recalls Christian, who played Teddy on NBC’s short-lived Malibu Shores. “Neve broke into tears because she felt so left out. People want to wrap her up and take care of her Maybe that’s what an audience feels when they watch Neve–her vulnerability.”
That vulnerability may also be rooted in Campbell’s rocky family history. Her parents divorced when she was a baby; each then remarried, then divorced again. Her father wed a third time. Though Campbell swore she’d never take the plunge, she did-two years ago, with Canadian actor Jeff Colt, her boyfriend of five years.
Her wedding spoke volumes about her fractured past. While Campbell and Colt were in England for her role in the ABC movie The Canteville Ghost, they were married in the Registry Office of Westminster. Campbell invited only 13 people, all friends she had made on location. “No, no family,” she says. “I love my family very much, and that was obviously a difficult decision. My immediate family, they’re all incredible-but not in the same room, you know?”
With her family foundation ever shifting, Campbell drew close to Christian, with whom she recently formed a theater company in Los Angeles. In that sense, she’s not unlike her character on Party of Five, which is the story of five children who are abruptly orphaned when their parents die in a car accident. Campbell plays eldest sister Julia 17, as an average American teen. Julia’s nervous smile, the downward look, the slight slouch-well, let’s just say Campbell had lots of practice at them.
neve campbell
“I relate to a fair amount of Julia,” she acknowledges. “In the beginning, she was extremely insecure, and she was the loser of the class. And at that age, I was certairdy that way, as well.” She pauses, then adds, “Probably still am in a lot of ways,” punctuating the remark with her trademark laugh.
When it came to picking her roles in “Scream” and “The Craft”, however, Campbell was no loser. “What I really loved about both the characters were their huge transitions,” she says. “That’s really what I look for. where I can show my stuff and bite my teeth into something, you know?”
Campbell does have one regret involving “Scream”; in the film, her victimized, virginal character says that if anyone were to play her in a movie, “With my luck, I’d get Tori Spelling.” Campbell now feels bad about the quip, and she’s written an apology to fellow Fox star Spelling (Beverly Hills, 90210).
“I begged [director] Wes Craven to change the line,” Campbell says. In fact, they did five takes with Babe, the pig, as the punch line. Then Craven asked her to do just one take mentioning the oft-ridiculed Tori–“to show the studio we’re shooting the script,” Campbell says. Of course, that’s the line Craven used.
Clearly, Campbell wants to please. This is apparent as she eagerly gives a tour of her new Hollywood Hills home. After years of apartment living, Campbell couldn’t be giddier.
“Ever since I was a kid I had wanted a pool,” she says from the master bedroom, which opens onto a warm swimming pool steaming in the rain. “You know what else I love?” A moment later she’s in the bathroom, climbing into the shower. “All the bathrooms have these windows that spin. They’re, like, really cool,” she says.
Campbell chose this house after looking at only 10, and it’s apparent why when she bounces downstairs, through the garage, into a vast open space-her dance studio, completed two weeks earlier. A pair of pink ballet slippers lie crumpled in the middle of the parquet floor.
“I really missed dance,’ says the 5’5” Campbell, sweeping into the room, her voice echoing off the mirrored walls. She tries to dance for 90 minutes a day now, for fun and exercise, whenever she has time.
Campbell’s entire early life was predicated upon her becoming a professional ballerina. She joined Canada’s National Ballet School at 9. With only 150 students, who practice three to five hours a day, the school turns out some of the world’s top dancers. In her first year, Campbell performed “The Nutcracker” with the National Ballet of Canada.
Her goal was shattered at 14 when she was forced to quit because of injuries and back-stabbing competition. “I got to a place at that school where I hated dance, and that was really tragic for me,” she says. “I had no friends, I didn’t fit in, and I was living in residence. When you live with the people you don’t fit in with, you’re in trouble.”
More than anything, Campbell longed for a “normal” high-school life. So, in 10th grade, she enrolled in a public school. But it was only a year before she missed performing and switched to an alternative school with a flexible schedule catering to artists, actors, and athletes.
She soon dropped out for good after winning a role as one of the Degas girls in “The Phantom of the Opera” in Toronto. She was 15, the youngest in a cast of adults, with whom Campbell felt a connection. Interestingly enough, the current story on Party of Five involves Julia’s decision not to go to college.
“In my life, that’s sort of what happened, too,” says Campbell. “I was working so much during school that I wasn’t happy. I’ve been training since I was 6, and all of a sudden I’m 15, and the member of a fantastic company. So it didn’t make a lot of sense to say, “Oh, I’m not going to take “The Phantom of the Opera” because I need to learn more about history.’”
The rest happened very quickly. After two years in “Phantom,” Campbell spent a year on the syndicated TV series Catwalk. While filming the NBC movie I Know My Son Is Alive in Canada, she learned how much more money she could make in America. After the project was completed, she moved to Los Angeles for a month to test the waters, and within a week she landed Party of Five.
Now, her career is in full gear. In addition to working on her series, she’s developing a movie for ABC. She was supposed to do one for the network last summer, but ABC allowed her to break her commitment and shoot “Scream,” provided she produce and star in a future project. The actress wanted to do a TV-movie about Tourette’s syndrome (she’s the national youth spokeswoman for the disorder; Damian, one of her two half brothers, has it), but ABC passed on the idea.
neve & her hubby
Whenever Campbell does have downtime, she spends it hanging out with a close cadre of Canadian pals or enjoying time around the house with her husband. As her celebrity status grows, she increasingly values her haven with Colt, who fell in love with her before fame struck. They met while he was bartending at the theater where Campbell performed in “Phantom.”
But the actress admits her attitude toward marriage has been colored by her parents’ struggles, and she realizes having two performers in the family can make things tough. “Jeff and I both have a very realistic view of marriage,” she says, speaking carefully. “You try as hard as you can, and you love each other as much as you can, and you hope to grow together. You hope that divorce is not an option. But if you’re miserable, you know, together, then why continue?”
Whatever happens in her personal and professional lives, Campbell will now have to play it out under the glare of the spotlight-something she says she hates. Knowing this sounds disingenuous coming from an actress, she tries to explain herself.
“I think my greatest insecurity would just be standing in the middle of the room and having everyone watching me think that’s what I want,” she says. “If I am interesting to you because of who I am, then that’s incredible. But if I’m interesting to you only because of what I am, then let’s not bother, you know?”