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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Screaming Success With Another Movie Out, Actress Neve Campbell Likes The Pace Of Her Career

Barry Koltnow The Orange County Register

Neve Campbell has to be one of the hottest young actresses in Hollywood. She’s coming off two huge movie successes, “Scream” and “Scream 2”; has a new film, the eagerly awaited “Wild Things,” which opened recently; and continues to star in the popular TV series “Party of Five.”

Another film, “54,” is in the can, she has signed to do a romantic comedy with Matthew Perry, and she recently produced another film with her brother. She also is the voice of Klara in “Simba’s Pride,” the sequel to “The Lion King.”

But ask the 24-year-old actress how her career is doing and she shrugs her shoulders, almost apologetically, and says she’s glad the pace is as slow as it is.

“As crazy as things might seem now, it could be going a lot faster,” she said, drawing slowly on an ever-present Marlboro Light, a nasty habit that she says she is considering going to a hypnotist to break.

“People keep asking me if I wish I didn’t have a TV series because then I would be able to be in more movies, but I think ‘Party of Five’ is a good thing in that way. It’s holding me back from doing too much.

“Having too many movies out at once can be a bad thing,” she added. “If this is the pace my career is meant to go at, I don’t want to question that. If it speeds up or slows down at some point, that’s what was meant to be.”

If this all sounds a bit mature to be coming from such a young player in the hardball Hollywood game, the actress agrees. But it’s always been this way.

“My mother says that on the day I was born, she looked in my eyes and said I was 1 day old going on 30. I guess I’m what is called an old soul.”

Growing up in Guelph, Ontario, the young Neve had only one childhood dream, and that was to become a ballerina. The daughter of working-class immigrants (her dad’s from Glasgow, Scotland, her mom’s from Amsterdam, the Netherlands), she got a full scholarship at 9 to attend the prestigious National Ballet School of Canada.

Being one of the few students from a relatively poor background, the actress said she had a rough time at the ballet school, where background and social status meant everything.

She persevered, however, and appeared in several school productions. Then, at 15, she won a role in Hal Prince’s Toronto production of “The Phantom of the Opera,” in which she played the Degas Girl.

Campbell used the role as a springboard to jump to the United States, where in a matter of months she landed the role of Julia Salinger in “Party of Five.” The show, seen Wednesdays on Fox at 9 p.m., is in its fourth year.

“I only took the role as a means to get my ‘green card,”’ the actress said, her tone at first matter-of-fact, then turning sarcastic.

“It only took me four years to get it. It cost me $50,000 (in attorney’s fees), and the really crazy thing is that they were denying me the green card even while I was paying $500,000 a year in taxes. It wasn’t fair.”

Her first big movie role was in the teen-witch hit “The Craft,” which led to her roles in the two “Scream” flicks. There is talk of a third “Scream” movie, but she said she has not decided whether she wants to do it. Director Wes Craven reportedly has said he won’t make it without her, so she does have considerable say in whether the movie gets made.

This, in Hollywood parlance, is called clout.

It also is clout when a young actress is able to demand a no-nudity clause in a major studio film. In contrast, her “Wild Things” co-star, Denise Richards, does not have this type of clout and could not make the same demand, even though the two women appear in the same sexual scene with a man (we’d tell you who the man is but that would spoil the movie).

“I don’t think of it as much about clout as about control,” Campbell said. “I want to control my own career. That’s how I was brought up: to fight for the control of my own destiny. I come from a family of fighters.”

The new movie, “Wild Things,” is hot, just like Campbell’s career. It has all the elements of a classic steamy sizzler - sex, murder, double-crosses and plenty of skin.

Campbell plays a trailer-trash orphan (sorry, there’s no better way to describe the character) who lives on the outskirts of a wealthy Florida town and is implicated in a rape case involving one of her fellow high school students (Richards) and a popular teacher (Matt Dillon).

Into this mix is thrown the most persistent police detective (Kevin Bacon) to come down the pike since Lt. Columbo.

Although the movie starts like a standard TV soap opera, it soon transforms into a murder mystery that has more twists and turns than a Formula One Grand Prix race.

Of course, none of you cares about the twists and turns. You want to know more about the sex scene.

“My feeling on sex scenes is that once you commit to doing it, you can’t feel uncomfortable about it,” Campbell said. “Audiences will sense that you’re uncomfortable, and you can’t allow that.

“So you have to find ways to be comfortable, and that’s the reason I drank.”

She’s not kidding. Campbell and Richards confirmed reports that the two downed a few margaritas and then moved to a bottle of wine before the sex scene.

“Before we started drinking, though, we sat down and discussed the scene,” Campbell said. “I was very sensitive to Denise’s situation. She chose to do nudity, and she was very nervous. So we sat down and mapped out our boundaries, how we were going to do the scene.

“I kept telling her not to worry about how they were going to make her look. I told her that it was in their best interest to make her look good.”

Campbell, whose only recent setback was the dissolution of her two-year marriage, said she knows she needs to stretch as an actress and is picking her next roles carefully with that thought in mind.

“My agents have wanted me to go for more glamorous roles, but I was never into that sex-symbol thing. But I am doing that romantic comedy next, so I hope people will get to see another side of me.

“I really want people to see me in a role where I’m not crying, I’m not screaming and I’m not an orphan. People have to be getting tired of seeing me like that.”