When people look at the poster for Grindhouse, a double feature with films by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, the standout image is a beautiful woman with a gun for a leg. This comes from Planet Terror, Rodriguez’s film about a biological agent from Iraq infecting a small town, and turning the people into zombies. Rose McGowan plays stripper named Cherry Darling who loses her leg, but attaches a machine gun to the stump so she can fight those infected.
Such an outrageous character in such a highly anticipated film seems sure to make McGowan a household name. Even if nobody likes the movie, who can forget a stripper blowing away zombie-like townies with a kick of the stump? The actress herself has no such hopes. “I don’t really think ahead that much,” she told Dish. “I really hope that drag queens have my leg on next Halloween. If that happens, I’ll be happy. I don’t think about things beyond that.”
A working actress for 15 years, McGowan has a following because or indie movies like The Doom Generation and Jawbreaker, the horror classic Scream and TV’s long-running Charmed. Perhaps her innate quirkiness has kept her away from full-on leading lady success.
The story of Rose McGowan begins in the “Children of God” cult, where she was raised for 10 years. After bouncing between her divorced parents for another five years, she legally emancipated herself. By 19, she began playing small roles in films, but was cast in her first lead, The Doom Generation, when director Gregg Araki discovered her casually. That film, a road movie featuring talking severed heads, castration by garden sheers and other graphic sex and violence scenes, may have been an early audition for Grindhouse. When it came to playing a gun-legged stripper, McGowan didn’t need to do research. She just got it.
”I’m not really one of those people who goes and writes some big back story and agonizes over characters. For me personally, it’s just kind of more instinctive. But I don’t have an acting background, I fell into it accidentally. I apparently don’t reflect on much. I’ve been asked that [before]. It never occurred to me to think about it. Maybe I should start thinking.”
It wasn’t the Araki film that taught her to appreciate wild filmmaking though. “I’ve also got kind of the absurdist in me. I love random strange things and I guess you couldn’t get more random or more strange [than Grindhouse].”
Romance has been a strange thing for McGowan as well. She spent four years with rock star Marilyn Manson before breaking off an engagement. Now rumors have it that the divorce Robert Rodriguez announced last year was actually instigated by an affair with McGowan on the set of Grindhouse. McGowan thinks the rumors give her too much credit.
”I just laughed because I figured he worked with Salma [Hayek] for so long. Even before I was acting, I remember reading about rumors about them. And so I figure, ‘Well, maybe if I do a couple more movies with Robert, and then somebody else starts working with him, she’ll get it.’ It’s generally kind of sexist but it’s not atypical. He was going through some personal problems, so of course. People go through personal problems before I even get around.”
There may be few women who have a mind that can come up with a gun-legged heroine, and McGowan fits that bill. “I really didn’t have any reservations. I thought it was hilarious, because it was completely absurd. I love the absurd. Kind of absurdist comedy, absurd things in life and this was certainly one of them. Robert called me once, he was struck in traffic while he was writing the script, and he said, ‘I got it. She’s going to have a machine gun leg.’ Cool. All right. Fantastic!”
It wasn’t cool or sexy to bring the gun leg to life. McGowan wore a grey cast to keep her leg walking stiffly, and so that digital artists could replace it with the gun. “It’s really weird, because I completely forget that it’s CGI. It completely looks real to me. It just looks completely natural to me, which I suppose is bizarre in and of itself. I thought it was pulled off wonderfully.” Of course, guns still have triggers, but Planet Terror isn’t about the logic of firing a gun off the leg stump. Says McGowan, “I squeezed an inner thigh muscle and that’s sort of how it went, my friend.”
McGowan is the only actress in a featured role to appear in both Grindhouse films as different characters. In Tarantino’s Death Proof, she plays a victim of Kurt Russell’s killer stuntman. She still had to try out like all the other actresses though. “I just auditioned for Quentin. I auditioned twice. And I auditioned while I was filming Planet Terror. It wasn’t the kind of thing where [I said], ‘Hey, I really think I should be in this movie.’ It wasn’t like that at all. It’s more just the typical way of him casting. He saw a ton of actresses, a lot of actresses, New York and LA.”
Going from kick ass heroine to helpless victim was another thrill for the actress. “Absolutely, because it was definitely a big arc.”
Perhaps Tarantino was paying her back for a scene in Planet Terror, in which the director cameos as an evil infected soldier who wants to have his way with Cherry. Naturally, she’s too tough for him. “I was happy. I killed him. And he was very good in that scene. Robert really directed him very well, and I just thought he was very good in that scene, very believable and very disgusting.”
A fan of obscure movies and television, even Tarantino was obsessed with Charmed. McGowan played Paige Matthews, a sister who conveniently appeared when co-star Shannen Doherty refused to sign a new contract. With her run lasting five years, the show added a little bit of structure to McGowan’s wild life. “When I say it’s given me discipline, I’m an extremely undisciplined person. I mean, if I didn’t like something I would move. If I didn’t like a city, I would just leave. [Doing Charmed], I suppose in a way is really more adult. It’s more like my sister, she would do her homework on time. I just wouldn’t. Now with different interpersonal relationships, knowing that if you don’t get along with someone, you’re still there the next day to work it out. I’m talking about people from the prop department or something like that.”
Now that the show is over, a movie career allows a little more freedom of movement, at least between jobs. McGowan even considers a return to Europe, where she once lived. “You can still like America and not be here. Ideally, I’d love to spend time in both. And it’s funny, when I was little in Italy the only thing I’d said I wanted to be was a ‘Contadina’ which is basically an overweight older woman that dressed all in black and had chin hairs and was kind of a peasant. I don’t know about that but it would be lovely for me to relearn Italian really, really well. I spoke three different dialects, and I think it tends to come back to me pretty quickly, and I could do some Italian films. That’d be an amazing life.”
Even the supposedly permanent is no match for the fickle McGowan. A tattoo of a woman on her back is “comin’ off. I’m removing it. Very painful. I want my back back. It cost $200 to put on, and twelve grand to take off.”
Though she’s moved around a lot, McGowan doesn’t invite change because she likes it. It’s quite the opposite. “Actually the funniest part is I’m terrified of change but I love it at the same time. I’m terrified of heights, but I’ve jumped out of a plane three times, and I go on roller coasters although I hate them. I also hate being scared of something. It pisses me off. So I try to master that, even if I’m terrified and it’s kind of the same approach to life.”
Her Charmed power, creating a teleportation orb around herself, still resonates with McGowan today. “Every time I’m on an airplane, I fantasize about being able to orb. I think that would be the best cover. Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, do you want to fly or have invisibility?’ Screw that. I’d rather be able to orb, because that’s the best thing ever.”
McGowan may be returning to the Grindhouse world very soon in her next role. She plays B-movie actress Susan Cabot in Black Oasis. “She played ‘Wasp Woman’ for Roger Corman. She had a lot of these kind of crazy, crazy movies, which Quentin’s seen every single one of. She ended up being killed by her son with nun-chucks, of all things. An ignominious death, for sure. I mean, there’s kind of reasons, if you will. I get to be in drag, because she dies in her early ‘50s. But she starts going crazier and crazier, just piling on the make-up like crazy. Then, she starts getting kind of crazier. She goes into time and thinks she’s ‘Wasp Woman’, and all these other things. So, I’ll be acting in all these other movies. It’s quite tragic, actually. I mean, this poor little thing.”
Though the Cabot biopic seems right up McGowan’s ally, she has all but resigned herself to the Grindhouse label. Perhaps it was another one of her absurd jokes, but she left me with the unfulfilled hope for another sort of career.
”It’s funny, I did a cover for Rolling Stone the other day and it was a kind of crazy lack of outfit, and I thought, ‘Oh lord, I’m never going to be Jane Austen in a film now.’ That’s what I’d really like to do.”
Grindhouse opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, April 6
