Rose McGowan Lives 'Charmed' Life
Billie
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The day after filming wrapped on her first season of
"Charmed" last spring, Rose McGowan dyed her hair a flaming red.
The producers were not pleased.
She had been very much the brunette as Paige Matthews, one of three witchy
sisters on the WB's one-hour supernatural drama. How would they explain the
change?
"Oh come on now," McGowan told the producers. "You explain a lot of goofy
things, goofier than this. Just say I did a spell or a potion which blew up in
my face and turned my hair red."
Though her suggestion was a joke, "that's essentially what they did."
McGowan's determination to have a new look is one way the 27-year-old actress
says she is coping with the "boot camp" confinement of shooting a weekly
series. She's even tried hypnosis to be "more accepting" of the rigorous
process.
Currently in reruns (Sundays, 8 p.m. Eastern), "Charmed" also stars Alyssa
Milano and Holly Marie Combs as Paige Matthews' two half-sisters. It begins its
fifth season with a two-hour episode Sept. 22.
McGowan, one of the stars of the 1996 hit thriller "Scream," joined "Charmed"
after last year's departure of Shannen Doherty.
Like Doherty, McGowan has a bit of a bad-girl image, built in part by her brief
engagement to shock-rocker Marilyn Manson and renegade roles in films such as
"The Doom Generation" and "Jawbreaker."
Still, directors John Kretchmer and Mel Damski, both on the "Charmed" set on a
day of shooting back-to-back episodes, said that persona doesn't really
represent the person.
"Rose is so antithetical to what the public perceives," Kretchmer said. "She's
an intelligent, worldly, sophisticated, educated woman who has an innate
sweetness. I don't see anything bad."
But that doesn't mean she won't speak her mind.
Damski recalls an incident last season when, although McGowan was the newcomer,
she took him aside and told him she felt he was being a little rough on a kid
actor who didn't know his lines. "I think she's very ethical. She's got a lot
of old-fashioned values," he said.
McGowan takes a keen interest in her Paige Matthews character. She hopes Paige
will become less obsessed with what is happening to her sisters and get "a life
of her own."
Dates would be a good thing.
"It's kind of bizarre that they have a young girl who is not seeing anyone ...
so hopefully I'll get some action," she says.
One of six children, McGowan was born and raised in a Christian commune near
Florence, Italy — "a real hippy-dippy background," she says — and she
rebelled against it.
"It was 'not shaving legs' meets 'wearing red lipstick' right from the get-go,"
she says, laughing.
She recalls fighting with her dad as an adolescent: "He took away all the
makeup I had managed to scrounge together, so I stole my sister's pastel
crayons and melted them over the stove to put rainbow-striped eye shadow on!"
She remembers, too, that on the one occasion there was a television in the
commune, "I crawled up and kissed it when Joan Collins was on. I love her.
She's my favorite."
McGowan said her father recently reminded her that when the family moved back
to the United States, she turned to him and said she wanted a Joan Collins
doll. "He had to inform me they did not make them, which was tragic!"
"STUPIDITY IS NOT A HANDICAP. Park elsewhere!"
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Stevie
> "Charmed" last spring, Rose McGowan dyed her hair a flaming red.
>
> The producers were not pleased.
>
> She had been very much the brunette as Paige Matthews, one of three witchy
> sisters on the WB's one-hour supernatural drama. How would they explain
the
> change?
>
> "Oh come on now," McGowan told the producers. "You explain a lot of goofy
> things, goofier than this. Just say I did a spell or a potion which blew
up in
> my face and turned my hair red."
>
> Though her suggestion was a joke, "that's essentially what they did."
I like that character more and more all the time. She's much more fun than
the Prue character. Can't wait until the upcoming season.
--
Steve
(Reply address has been changed to protect the innocent)