“When you play evil, you often have the exact same beats as you would play in a comedy,” she says. “Take my character in Conan The Barbarian, for instance. I have these long, claw things, and I’m trying to find a virgin so I can slit her throat or something with these crazy nails. When I’m doing a very over-the-top, evil character, I will often start laughing as soon as the director says ‘cut’, just laughing at myself, because the whole thing’s just so ridiculous!”
In a career that spans close to two decades, McGowan has played numerous iconic roles. She was murdered by a garage door in Scream, and had her leg replaced by a machine gun in Planet Terror, but her very first role was in Gregg Araki’s road trip movie The Doom Generation. A film about a trio of teens who go on an inadvertent killing spree across the sleazier parts of the US, it’s dark and gory and hilarious. For the young McGowan, it was a learning experience.
“The funny thing is, I’d never acted before,” she says, “so I had no frame of reference for what was normal or abnormal on a movie set, or even what I was supposed to be doing. I knew it was abnormal in the sense that I lived my life at night for the month we were filming – it was a very bizarre universe we stepped into.”
McGowan based her character, Amy Blue, on herself at the age of 15 – which is to say she was sullen, surly and extremely snarky. She was not, however, all that worldly, and says that many of the film’s more colourful sexual references flew over her head. “People would come up to me and tell me that I’d played a brave role, and I’d say, ‘Oh, thanks!’ without really understanding why,” she says with a laugh. “It wasn’t until about a year ago, when I was doing the DVD commentary with the director Gregg Araki and some of the other actors, that I watched it again, and I was shocked by some of the things I said! I literally didn’t understand what was happening or what I was saying in the sexual arena. All these people had said I was brave, but the truth is, it came out of ignorance and idiocy, because I had no idea what was going on!”
In the grindhouse tribute Planet Terror, McGowan plays Cherry Darling, a stripper who loses her leg during a zombie apocalypse, only to have it replaced with a table leg, and then a machine gun. Practically speaking, this was one of the most bizarre acting challenges of her career – mainly because she had to learn how to move in an entirely new way, while lugging a ridiculously heavy piece of plaster around.
“I had a five-pound cast, with LED lights, strapped to me, and my toe was taped up so it was just my heel resting on the ground,” she says. “On the other side, I was wearing a four-inch high-heeled boot. I had to always keep in mind that my character was walking on a tiny gun barrel. I had to run faster and jump higher than everyone else, and do so while I was wearing this ridiculous, heavy cast! I’ve done a few bizarre things in my career, but I don’t know how you top that.”
Though McGowan’s characters often find themselves in ridiculous scenarios, at heart, they are recognisable and weirdly relatable. “There are a lot of people who were sullen and angry as teens,” she says with a laugh, “and I think they can see themselves in the characters I played. I have a friend whose 14-year-old daughter has just shaved her head – they’re all clucking about it, and I’m like, ‘Fuck, I shaved my head when I was 14. That’s what kids that age are supposed to do!’” she laughs. “They’re supposed to be pissed off! One of the reasons The Doom Generation works is that there are so many people who’ve been where Amy Blue was – where this friend’s daughter is currently. Not everything has to be sunshine all the time – it’s nice to see something relatable.”
Right now, McGowan is at a bit of a turning point in her career. No longer particularly interested in acting, she tells me that her next big passion is to direct – she has already made a short film, in collaboration with Ridley Scott’s production company, and her next aim is for something feature-length.
“My taste is a bit …” she pauses, “I don t want to say ‘twisted’, because that’s such a cliché, but I like things that are tongue-in-cheek, things that don’t go where you expect them to. My short is all about a perfect world in which things gradually start to derail – I’ve found a feature film project that I’d really like to start in the next six to nine months, and the story for that is the same way. I might be setting myself up for a pattern, I don’t know …”
BY ALASDAIR DUNCAN
