People

Issue date:
December 12-14, 1997

Sexy, successful -- and 24

"Party of Five" star Neve Campbell is back onscreen this weekend in "Scream 2."

ronically, actress Neve Campbell -- star of Scream, its new sequel and TV's Party of Five -- just may be too busy being successful to enjoy her own success. "I'm quite aware of the fact that I'm tired right now," she says, relaxing with a cigarette in her trailer on the Party of Five set. "But that's my choice, and I don't blame anyone but myself."

So why work so hard? For Campbell, 24, it's to ensure that the movie offers will be waiting for her when Party is over in 21/2 years. It's "so I can do two or three movies a year and have months off, and have my life."

Right now, Campbell's life is her work: a four-season gig as strong-willed-but-sensitive Julia Salinger on Fox's Generation-X favorite, Party of Five, and a film career the entire cast of Friends -- combined -- would be proud of. Her first major feature, last year's creepy teenage witch story The Craft, opened at No. 1, and her second, Wes Craven's hip horror spoof, Scream, became the year's surprise blockbuster, selling more than $100 million in tickets in the USA alone.

The buzz about Neve (rhymes with "Bev") Campbell is almost deafening: Entertainment Weekly has dubbed her "one of Hollywood's top Gen-X ingenues," while Craven praises her as a "female Jimmy Stewart." She already has made the cover of Rolling Stone, hosted Saturday Night Live and donned the ultimate young Hollywood status symbol: a milk mustache.

Next year Campbell will mix things up as a tough-talking ex-con in Wild Things, opposite Kevin Bacon and Matt Dillon; as a 1970s soap opera diva in 54, with Mike Myers; and as the voice of Kiara in Disney's sequel to The Lion King. She also has co-produced and appeared in a low-budget independent feature, all while continuing to grind out a weekly hour-long drama.

t's not that Neve Campbell would rather be partying. In contrast to some of her Brat Pack predecessors, who embraced the Hollywood scene with abandon, there's a sobering world-weariness about Campbell, a been-around-the-block quality that makes it seem as if she spent her childhood slinging hash or mining coal when the other kids were goofing off at the mall. Her brother Christian, who runs a Los Angeles theater company, calls her "a very grounded soul." She prefers staying home to the party circuit. "It's really kind of the last thing you want to do after 15 hours of work," she says. "I don't get into small talk. I have so little time to talk at all that if I do want to have a conversation, I'd like it to be deep and I'd like to learn something from it."

Campbell's preternatural discipline is the inevitable result of a dancing career that already had peaked when she was barely out of junior high. Born in Guelph, Ontario, Campbell enrolled in Canada's ultracompetitive National Ballet School at 9 but quit at 14, overwhelmed by both the physical and mental pressures. At 15, she transferred to an alternative high school and joined Toronto's Phantom of the Opera cast, but within a year she had dropped out of school altogether and moved in with her brother. Canadian TV and movie-of-the-week roles followed; she moved to L.A. in 1994 and was tapped for Party of Five.

Her breakneck pace has barely abated since then. She's managed to marry -- and separate from -- her longtime boyfriend, actor Jeff Colt, in just the past two years, a subject she politely declines to discuss.

ampbell's stoic determination comes as no surprise to those around her. "I think because she's done theater, she just knows the concept of 'the show must go on' and the person is less important than the whole," says director Craven. "I have no illusion that she doesn't have pain. That's part of what makes her so interesting."

"I don't think you can do everything she's doing and not be tired and frustrated sometimes," agrees her Party of Five co-star Scott Wolf. "But she's still Neve like I know her. She's still always laughing and smiling."

Indeed, Campbell, who dabbles in Buddhist philosophy, tries to keep everything in perspective. "I really don't believe that anything is negative," she says earnestly. "Any kind of experience, whether it seems to be negative or positive, if you learn from it and you grow from it and you are aware of where you are within it, then you've made it positive somehow."

Jennifer Mendelsohn last wrote for USA WEEKEND about the grittiness of prime-time TV.