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Rose Arianna McGowan (born September 5, 1973) is an American actress best known for her role as Paige Matthews in The WB TV series Charmed, and the cult-classic The Doom Generation. She has also appeared in several major Hollywood films, with leading roles in Scream, Jawbreaker, and the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double-feature Grindhouse. McGowan is currently the co-host of TCM's film-series program, The Essentials. A rising ingénue with raw talent and bursting sexuality, Rose McGowan won praise for her breakthrough role as the speed demon in Gregg Araki's "The Doom Generation" (1995) and had a commercial hit playing the blonde teen bombshell Tatum in "Scream" (1996). Smart, hip and attractive, McGowan has a background just begging for talk show exploitation. Born in Florence, Italy, where her father headed the local Children of God cult (the same one in which River and Joaquin Phoenix were raised), she is the oldest daughter and second born of six. McGowan began modeling in Italian magazines as a child but her world was turned upside down when her father ran off with her nanny. McGowan's mother brought the brood to the USA where they were often on public assistance and McGowan did not always mesh with her mother's men friends. In a 1997 article in Interview, she claimed that when she was 14 years old, her mother's then-current beau—a 28-year old surfer dude—convinced her mother that McGowan was on drugs. She was locked up in a drug rehab clinic, although she has insisted she never had a problem. Released, McGowan tried living with her father in Montreal, Canada, modeled a bit, then hit the scene in the Pacific Northwest, even attending art school in Seattle for a short period. McGowan, the second-eldest of six children (plus two half-siblings), was born in Florence, Italy, the daughter of Terri, a French-American writer, and Daniel McGowan, an Irish-born American artist. Daniel McGowan ran an Italian chapter of the Children of God to which both he and his wife held membership until 1978. McGowan spent her early childhood amid the group's communes, often traveling Europe with her parents. Through her father's art contacts in Italy, McGowan became a child model and appeared in Vogue Bambini and various other Italian magazines. Her parents returned to the United States when she was 10, when they divorced. She subsequently relocated to Oregon and then Gig Harbor, Washington, where she also met childhood friend actor Rey-Phillip Santos. McGowan did not speak English until she moved to the U.S. McGowan's formative years were spent with her father in Seattle, Washington, attending Roosevelt High School and Nova Alternative High School. At the age of 15, she officially emancipated herself from her parents. McGowan pursued a possible career in the film industry during her late teens, and also enrolled in a beauty school as a back-up. McGowan made her first appearance in a Hollywood film with a bit role in the 1992 Pauly Shore comedy Encino Man. Her role in the 1995 black comedy The Doom Generation brought her to the attention of film critics, and she received a nomination for "Best Debut Performance" at the 1996 Independent Spirit Awards. McGowan was subsequently cast in a supporting role in the 1996 hit horror film Scream. After the phenomenal success of "Scream," one might expect McGowan to 'go Hollywood'; instead she continued to appear in independent films. She offered a cameo as one of a trio of Valley girls (alongside Shannen Doherty and Traci Lords) who are vaporized by a space alien in Araki's nihilistic look at Beverly Hills teenagers, "Nowhere" (1997). In "Phantoms" (1997), she and Joanna Going played sisters who return to their hometown only to find no one living there. McGowan won particular praise for her turn as a sexy young woman clad in a red strapless gown who romances Jeremy Davies in "Going All the Way" (also 1997). McGowan spent the majority of the 1990s appearing in a variety of independent films, including roles in Southie, Going All the Way, and Lewis & Clark & George. In 1997, she appeared in the critically acclaimed short Seed, directed by San Francisco-born filmmaker Karin Thayer, and played opposite Peter O'Toole in the 1998 film adaptation of the Dean Koontz novel Phantoms. In 1998 she played the self-destructive party girl sister of a young Boston man who has escaped his rough upbringing but finds himself being drawn back into a dangerous existence, and that year she played the orphaned high school student who, after an abusive upbringing by her grandmother and rejection from the teacher whom she seduces, turns homicidal in the uneven but bizarrely entertaining "Devil In the Flesh," which would become a stable of late-night pay cable programming. Next as McGowan was building a niche portraying sexy, snarky bad/good girl teenagers was another high school black comedy, "Jawbreaker" (1999), as the dictatorial leader of a tight-knit trio of high school hotties who unravel after accidentally killing a fellow student with the titular candy in a kidnapping scheme gone awry. Notably, McGowan also starred in the 1999 comedy Jawbreaker, where she played a high school student who tries to cover up a classmate's murder. That role earned McGowan a nomination for Best Villain at the 1999 MTV Movie Awards. In 2001, McGowan was cast as Paige Matthews in the popular The WB television series Charmed, as a replacement lead actress after Shannen Doherty's departure from the show. She was offered to be a producer after the seventh season, but turned it down. The series ended its run on May 21, 2006. After a turn in the oddball fantasy "Monkeybone" (2001), the actress shifted from features to television when she was cast in 2001 as lost sister Paige Matthews on The WB's popular witchcraft-themed series "Charmed" when one of the original actresses, Shannen Doherty, left the series after some behind-the-scenes squabbling. Though McGowan and her character were well-integrated into the popular but not-so-creatively-ambitious show, the actress always somehow gave the appearance that she was slumming. Meanwhile, she studied Ann-Margaret's moves in "Viva Las Vegas" when she signed on to play the actress opposite Jonathan Rhys Myers as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the highly rated CBS miniseries "Elvis" (2005). In May 2005, McGowan portrayed actress/singer Ann-Margret in Elvis, a Golden Globe-winning CBS mini-series about the life of Elvis Presley. That same year, she lent her voice to the video game Darkwatch as a femme fatale named Tala. The game was published by Capcom for PlayStation 2 and Xbox. She returned to the big screen to costar in “The Black Dahlia” (2006), Brian De Palma’s take on James Ellroy’s complicated and richly-textured noir thriller about two hard-edged cops (Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart) who descend into obsession, corruption and sexual degeneracy as they investigate the brutal murder of would-be actress Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner), who was found tortured and vivisected in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, McGowan was cast in “Grind House” (2007), a pair of 90-minute horror films written and directed Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Rodriguez shot his segment, “Planet Terror,” in the first half of 2006, while Tarantino’s, “Death Proof,” began production that August. McGowan starred in both shorts. In 2006, McGowan had a brief role in Brian De Palma's Academy Award-nominated film The Black Dahlia. The following year, she starred in the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double-feature Grindhouse, released on April 6, 2007. Cast in utterly divergent roles, McGowan appears in both portions of the film, as go-go dancing Cherry in Planet Terror, and as Pam in Death Proof. McGowan attended the 60th Annual Cannes Film Festival to promote Death Proof along with Robert Rodriguez, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms, Zoe Bell, and Quentin Tarantino. According to Variety, McGowan has signed on to play B-movie staple Susan Cabot in the upcoming film Black Oasis. Director Stephan Elliott (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) has penned and will direct the film based on a Premiere article by John H. Richardson. Shooting will begin fall 2007. McGowan is also a co-host with Robert Osborne on TCM's film-series program The Essentials, on which a classic Hollywood film is shown every week. |
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