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Neve Adrianne Campbell (born October 3, 1973) is a Canadian film and television actress. Beginning her career on stage, she came to fame on the 1990s television series Party of Five, and subsequently appeared in leading roles in several Hollywood films, including Scream, The Craft and Wild Things. She has since appeared in smaller parts and returned to stage roles. This sloe-eyed brunette began her career as a teenage performer in her native Canada, singing and dancing in the chorus of the Toronto production of "The Phantom of the Opera" from 1988 to 1990. After a brief modeling stint, Neve Campbell landed a one-season (1992-93) regular role as one of the aspiring musicians in the Canadian-produced series "Catwalk", which aired on MTV in the USA. Her small screen breakthrough came when she was cast as Julia Salinger, as the headstrong older sister, in the award-winning drama series "Party of Five" (Fox, 1994-2000). Over the course of the series' run, her character experienced numerous trials and tribulations from an unwanted pregnancy to a busted marriage, all while coping with her family and their problems (which included alcoholism and cancer, among others). Throughout it all, Campbell acquitted herself proving to be a fine dramatic player. Campbell was born in Guelph, Ontario. Campbell's mother, Marnie (née Neve), is a yoga instructor and psychologist from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her father, Gerry Campbell, an immigrant to Canada from the East End of Glasgow, Scotland, taught high school drama classes in Mississauga, Ontario — first at Westwood Secondary School (now Lincoln M. Alexander Secondary School) and later at Lorne Park Secondary School. Campbell's maternal grandparents ran a theatre company in the Netherlands and her paternal grandparents were also performers. Campbell is Catholic, but also identifies as Jewish because of her mother's Sephardic Jewish ancestry, about which she has said: "I am a practicing Catholic, but my lineage is Jewish, so if someone asks me if I'm Jewish, I say yes". Campbell's parents divorced when she was two years old. She and brother Christian resided largely with their father (who received custody of the two), with regular periods at their mother's home, until Neve moved into residence at the National Ballet of Canada at age nine. She trained at the National Ballet School of Canada at the age of nine, and appeared in performances of The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty. Campbell moved from dancing into acting at the age of 15, performing The Phantom of the Opera at the Pantages Theatre in Toronto. Her original goal was to make it professionally as a ballerina, but accumulated too many injuries; they included shin splints, fallen arches, pulled calf muscles, cracked ribs, a bunion removed from her big toe, snapping hip syndrome, tendonitis, bursitis, and stress-induced hair loss. She finally left dance in favor of a full-time acting career. She attended Earl Haig Secondary School in Toronto, Ontario. Her first starring role was playing Daisy on the Canadian youth TV series Catwalk from 1992 to 1994. She rose to wider fame outside of Canada after being cast as Julia Salinger in the drama series Party of Five, in which she starred from 1994 to 2000. The actress was a bit slower to translate her appeal on the big screen. She made her film debut in the forgettable direct-to-video outing "The Dark" (1994) before finding success in a supporting role as a teenager dabbling in witchery in "The Craft" (1996), although co-stars Fairuza Balk and Robin Tunney had the showier roles. Campbell achieved her breakthrough as the put-upon heroine Sidney Prescott in the post-modern box-office smash "Scream" (also 1996). "Scream," directed by Wes Craven and scripted by Kevin Williamson, both parodied and emulated the slasher films of the early 80s and spawned the inevitable sequel "Scream 2" (1997), with Campbell's character now a college student. She fared less well with this outing, playing an aspiring actress targeted by a copycat killer (One set piece had Campbell "acting" in a school production that was unintentionally hilarious). Nevertheless, she returned to close out the trilogy with "Scream 3" (2000), this time returning from self-imposed exile to visit the set of a movie based on her experiences. Although Campbell's first widely released film was 1996's The Craft, she reached the height of her success when she appeared in the successful Scream horror film trilogy, followed by Wild Things (in which she played a goth), and Three to Tango. She was on People's "50 Most Beautiful People" list in 1998. Following the end of the Scream series, Campbell appeared in several films that received a limited theatrical release, but were well reviewed by critics, including the 2000 film Panic, in which she starred alongside William H. Macy and Donald Sutherland, and the 2003 film The Company, about Chicago's Joffrey Ballet. Campbell co-wrote, produced, and starred in the film. Despite pre-release publicity suggesting otherwise, Campbell did not break her tradition of having a "no-nudity" clause in her contract for the film. Campbell's accumulated credits sufficiently impressed legendary director Robert Altman to turn the Campbell-penned story (ultimately co-written with screenwriter Barbara Turner) of a young ballet dancer poised to become a fictional Chicago troupe's next big thing into his next film, "The Company" (2003). The actress, who trained at the National Ballet of Canada as a girl, was cast as the rising prima ballerina Ry, around who Altman built a trademark multi-character tale filmed inside the famed Joffrey Ballet Campbell's authentic knowledge of the inside world of ballet and her always convincing dancing allowed her to deliver her best, most nuanced performance to date. She followed up with the equally ambitious "When Will I Be Loved?" (2004), a noir-ish intellectually and erotically-charged tale of a indulged, sexually adventurous femme fatale artist (Campbell) who uses her powerful sexuality to advance her aims and control those who seek to use her. Although it was a daring--even brash--choice for Campbell, the movie suffered from writer-director James Toback's largely improvisational approach and characteristic--and slightly disturbing-- fetishization of his leading lady. She did break the clause for When Will I Be Loved, released in 2004, a film which was praised by critic Roger Ebert, but which received only a brief and limited theatrical release. In March 2006, Campbell made her West End theatre debut, in a version of Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues at the Old Vic theatre. The play, which received mixed reviews, co-stars Matthew Modine and Maximilian Schell, and was directed by Robert Altman, with whom Campbell has previously worked with in The Company. She performed again at the West End later in 2006 as part of Love Song, starring alongside Cillian Murphy, Michael McKean, and Kristen Johnston, to mixed reviews. On July 7, 2007, Campbell presented at the UK leg of Live Earth at Wembley Stadium, London. Campbell married Canadian actor Jeff Colt on April 3, 1995; they divorced on May 8, 1998. She has also dated actors John Cusack, Matthew Lillard, and Pat Mastroianni. Campbell appears in campaign literature and videos for the Tourette Syndrome Foundation of Canada and the Tourette Syndrome Association, a similar organisation in the United States. Her younger half-brother, Damian McDonald, has Tourette syndrome. She also has an elder brother, Christian, and another brother, Alex, both of whom are actors. In 2005, Campbell began dating John Light, an English actor who she met while filming the movie Investigating Sex. The couple became engaged in December 2005 and live in London, England. When Light proposed, he got down on one knee and recited Shakespeare to Campbell. They married in Malibu on May 5, 2007; her father "gave away" the bride. |
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