Goth seems to always follow Neve Campbell. Maybe thats because when she was a kid she always pictured herself looking like a female Eric Draven. Then she played in certain films that made her a Goth icon like The Craft and Scream. But in her latest film The Company she plays Ry who is a member of the famous Joffrey Ballet who on her off time works in a Goth club.
Though she played the pansy ass Julia Salinger on FOXs Party of Five for six years she had grown up ballet dancing but due to becoming rich she had to quit. So co-writing, producing and starring in The Company has been a dream for her. She has been nurturing this film for seven years, it all finally came together when she was able to convince legendary 6 time Oscar nominee Robert Altman to come onboard and direct.
Now The Company is one of this seasons most highly anticipated films and who knows Neve may be collecting an Academy Award for screenwriting next year
The Company opens Christmas Day.
Daniel Robert Epstein: This movie was inspired by your own experience, have you always wanted to make it?
Neve Campbell: I grew up watching Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and the old school dance films where you actually got to see the choreography and dance movement. I never really felt that in the more recent dance films we ever got to see the movement or that any of them were actually about the world of dance itself. To me, that was really important because dance was my life. It was my first career. I did it since I was six. It was so important for me to tell the story.
DRE: Robert Altman got involved because of you. How is that different from other projects?
NC: It feels great to have creative control and obviously, since this was my baby. Its something that Im very passionate about it. It meant a lot to me to have the opportunity to bring people together who I was inspired by--Barbara Turner who is a fantastic writer, the Joffrey Ballet and then, Robert Altman which was a coup. It obviously feels great. In the industry nowadays, it's really difficult to find good scripts and good female roles and it was even more difficult five years ago. But now because of the threat of the actor's strike and because of September 11th, the studios have even less courage. So, Id rather go out, try to make things that mean something to me rather than sit back and read a lot of bad scripts and get frustrated.
DRE: How improvised was this film?
NC: Everything was improvised except for Malcolms [McDowell] stuff. The film was scripted; Barbara had written it and we created the story together. Bob normally throws the scripts out. That's what he does, and this was the one situation where it was incredibly appropriate. There's no way to get 50 cast members [of a dance company] to learn how to act for the first time and do it naturally. So the only way to have the dancers be natural with all the other actors and to have the people that we had in the film be natural was just to have them improvise and say, 'Well, this is your situation and these are stories that you told us about. So, have at it"
DRE: How did you select the Joffrey Ballet?
NC: Barbara and I didn't really want to hit on the typical dance clichs that you see which is the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who gets there or someone fighting for status within a company. The girl who is in the chorus who wants to be a principal dancer. The Joffrey's mentality is everyone's a star, no star. A leading dancer in the company will also do chorus roles and an apprentice who is also great at modern will go and lead in a modern piece. I liked that because I didn't want to deal with the typical clichs. Also, it was only 45 members as opposed to New York City or some of the other companies that have 90 members. So, this was obviously going to be a lot easier to work with. And they have a really eclectic repertoire. They do classics, but they also do modern and contemporary and I thought that would be visually more stimulating.
DRE: Who made the decision what repertoire was filmed?
NC: We all did including Gerry Arpino who's the head of the company. I mean, it behooved us to use a lot of their own repertoire as It was because we only had a three week window to actually shoot all of the dancers. So, to bring in ten new pieces and have the company learn them was going to be really difficult and they have a great repertoire. So, it was Bob, Barbara, Gerry and myself just going through tapes of all the dance pieces and we spent months doing that, and finally choosing stuff.
DRE: What were you looking for in the reps that we're actually shot?
NC: Things that would obviously be visually stimulating, that would be interesting not only to people who are in the dance world and are aware of dance, but also for people who don't know anything about dance. We wanted a variety of things. The Blue Snake piece, which I saw when I was nine, that to me was like a fairy tale. It's made for children. The reason that we thought that it would be good for the movie is the way that Robert Desrosiers choreographs and the way he that takes music after he works with the dancers; we thought that would be a fun way to have the piece in the movie. We were looking for variety some classics and some contemporary.
DRE: How was this experience different from when you were dancing?
NC: Well, I actually got to choose the pieces that I wanted to be in, to choose the choreographers that I wanted to work with and the costumes that I wanted to wear. That's a dancer's dream, but in the end, it's the work. I trained for eight and a half hours a day for six months to do this, and you can't cheat.
DRE: Was it hard to get back up to speed?
NC: Yeah I had 10 years off [laughs] and had to get up to par with the Joffrey Ballet. So, it was definitely a lot of work. I was injured a lot and actually broke my rib three days before I got to Chicago. So, I did the whole movie with a broken rib which was a challenge, but it's my favorite thing in the world to do. It's my passion.
DRE: How did you break the rib?
NC: Learning the "Funny Valentine" piece with my coach in LA. We were learning
it from a tape. We didn't have them with us yet and its hard to learn dance pieces from a tape because first of all, you're watching It backwards, but also to figure out how lifts are done which can be complicated. We were doing a lift wrong. He was lifting me under my rib instead of under my hip.
DRE: What about working with Malcolm McDowell?
NC: Malcolms energy is phenomenal and when he enters a room, it's like immediate bravado, but it's fabulous and real. Hes so talented and loves his work. What was great about this is that he really committed himself. He spent weeks with Gerry Arpino, the head of the company, who his character is loosely based around and went into the financial meetings and inevitably got to a place where he was making financial decisions for the company [laughs]. He really fell in love with the art and the dancers and what we were doing. Im just really grateful that he was a part of it.
DRE: How did he Gerry Arpino feel about it?
NC: Gerry loves the Joffrey so much and he knows how much this film could do for the Company and every dance company struggles; the Joffrey certainly has struggled. So, he was really open and excited about it and had a lot of opinions about how bad ballet movies are. He was happy.
DRE: Do you think people will appreciate this film even though it doesnt have the usual dramatic arc or narrative in the traditional sense?
NC: I don't have apprehension because there's nothing that I can do about it at this point. What Im happy about is that we stuck to our guns and didn't go for the clichs and didn't go for the typical A/B/C plotline; beginning, middle and end. Had we tried to do that, we would've lost a lot of the aspects that we wanted to show about this world. I love this kind of movie where it's a bird's eye view. You feel like you're within it and you're learning something. Maybe with so much reality TV, people who seem to be fascinated by that right now, maybe there will be an interest in taking a look at other people's lifestyles.
DRE: How does this movie resonate with you?
NC: I didn't know what to expect at any point except that I had an idea in my mind of what I wanted to create and I knew to trust Bob; everyone knew to trust Bob. If anything, it was just excitement the whole time. It was my dream come true. Everyone was excited because the dancers had never been in a film before. A lot of the other people who were parts of the company had never been on a set before, and the crew had never seen dance before and for the first couple of days, they tried to pretend that they werent interested and by the third day, they were applauding after every dance piece. Bob was learning about a world and discovering it. The actors were getting to improvise. It was really a magical, inspiring experience for everyone.
DRE: How did you and Bob get together?
NC: From the beginning Barbara and I said that this movie that had to be Altmanesque. Out of anyone Bob is the best at creating worlds. If you look at Nashville or even Gosford Park, he's better at having 80 cast members and telling a story in that way rather than having three in the cast and he prefers that. So, we really felt that he would be best. We didnt think that we would get him, but Barbara had acted for him, actually, years ago [on 1964s TV movie Nightmare in Chicago] so she sent him the script and he said he was intrigued but had other things. He was supposed to make a movie with Paul Newman but he said, "Im interested in hearing about it." We spent a couple of months just coming out and nagging him basically. I talked to him about my passion and why I thought that it'd be interesting and good story to tell and what I loved about it and what amazing athletes these people are. I sent him to ballet classes at the Joffrey Ballet School and showed him dance pieces. I think that once he started meeting the dancers and the Joffrey, he just fell in love with their discipline and artistry.
DRE: While you were making this movie Gosford Park won an Oscar for best screenplay. Because you were involved with the story did you think you could win one?
NC: No. This movie would not have been made right if I had gone and said, "I really want to look for some kind of Academy Award out of this." Then I would've been trying to make myself the lead in the movie and it would've been about my acting experience and my getting to another stage of my career. I really just wanted to tell this story as an ode to dancers. If you do things from the heart and sincerely, then perhaps good things will come out of it. But in no way do I expect awards, and certainly not for my character to get anything. Im not a lead in the movie. It's a very quiet character also and that's what I wanted her to be. Malcolm, perhaps you never know. I hate even thinking about that stuff.
DRE: Are you interested in getting more involved in dance companies, on their boards and so forth?
NC: I may do that with the Joffrey. Although, Gerry just wants me to dance with the company [laughs]. I'll figure it out. We'll try and start this one up in LA. Then, Davis Robertson who's also one of my partners in the movie is a choreographer as well and he's asked me to come dance at Lincoln Center in June. Im not sure Ill be able to do, but maybe. That's a few months training. So, well see.
DRE: What do you think will be the impact of this film on the dance world?
NC: Well, most dancers will tell you that they don't feel theres ever been a great dance film made about the world itself. So, Im hoping that they'll be happy with it. The response that we're getting already from dancers is pretty lovely.
DRE: What are they saying?
NC: They're saying, Thank you for making the first movie about out world that's realistic. which is nice and Thank you for showing choreography and movement and the process.' So that feels good, but hopefully it'll expose the world in a way so that itll help people who don't know about dance be interested or go see a ballet. Who knows, but hopefully, that'll be what happens.
DRE: What was that process of creating the story like?
NC: Ry was actually loosely based around one of the dancers in the company, Trinity Hamilton with the long red hair. She was the one who used to supplement her income by working at that Goth bar that we shot in. Her boyfriend was a chef. Pretty much everything in the film are things that we've taken from the dancers themselves and from the people who are in the company. So, it was loosely based around her, but the experience of a dancer struggling in a company or becoming injured or dealing with trying to have a relationship outside of dance, that's everyone's experience.
DRE: What made you decide to leave the dance world? Was it a lot of the bullshit like we see in the movie?
NC: [laughs] It was sort of a natural progression also I suffered a lot of injuries. Dance is hard on everyone's body, but it's also genetics. My family already had hip problems, and so, I had arthritis by the time I was 20. I also was doing Phantom of the Opera at 15 and doing classical ballet and working with contemporary choreographers in Toronto. At the same time I was also doing commercials, television and that just slowly took over. Then, I got Party of Five when I was 20 and suddenly was working 15 hours a day for nine months and there was no room for dance anymore.
DRE: Are you going to dance now?
NC: It's hard to do it in LA. There's so little there. With Domingo, we can maybe start something up, and with the new Kodak Theater, it'll start growing except that theater is too huge in the auditorium to actually bring in a new company. So, I really don't know how to do it there yet.
DRE: You just have to move to New York.
NC: Yeah. I'm actually looking for a place.
DRE: Talk about other dance films you think were good and others that were on the corny side?
NC: In Turning Point, you get a nice view of what an older dancer or a retired dancer goes through, what that struggle was.
DRE: And Footloose?
NC: Footloose' is fantastic [laughs]. Kevin [Bacon], he shouldve been in our film. I love Kevin. We've worked together.
DRE: I know it made me think of his famous scene in Wild Things.
Are actors wussies compared to dancers?
NC: Absolutely [laughs]. What it takes to be a dancer and be disciplined and to get a place in a company with as many great dancers as there are and as few companies as there are, it takes a lot of work.
DRE: When you went from dancing to acting were you surprised by all the bullshit?
NC: Some actors can be very spoiled and with what Id experienced since I was six years old yeah, absolutely. It was astonishing to me in some ways how easy it was.
DRE: Because of movies like The Craft, Scream andWild Things.
NC: Everyone always get that face when they mention Wild Things.
DRE: I love that flick. So because of those movies you have a strong Goth following, have you encountered those fans before?
NC: I suppose. I suppose that I get a whole mix of it. I haven't noticed it too much, really.
DRE: Were you ever into being Goth?
NC: I was when I was a kid, I was going to grow up have black hair, a pasty white face and a lot of earrings but that didn't really go with ballet. I only have two. [shows her ears] I only made it to two and then, I got infections and couldn't go any further [laughs] and no tattoos.
DRE: What are your musical tastes now?
NC: I listen to a whole mix of stuff. Being from the dance world, I did ballet, jazz, modern, contemporary, Flamenco, and hip hop; I trained in all of those, and so, love all kinds of music. Obviously, I spent most of my time listening to classical piano every morning, but I like some contemporary bands like Five for Fighting and Ben Folds, and I also like Celtic music and Scottish stuff.
DRE: Are you doing your own choreography to Celtic Music?
NC: Domingo Rubio who was my partner in the "Funny Valentine" piece in the movie, actually left the company to try and start up a company in Los Angeles.
So, he's asked me to help him with that. We've been working on choreography but it's hard. People keep asking me if Im going to go and dance now, and truthfully, if you're going to be a professional, classical ballet dancer, you have to be training all the time, eight hours a day. So, there may be times where Ill go and perform and train for a few months, but Im going to stay in it in other ways, helping other people with their companies.
DRE: Would you like to do a big musical?
NC: I was just offered [the Broadway show] Chicago a month ago, but I wasn't able to do it because it was a choice between actually promoting this film or actually doing that, and after seven years of developing a movie. It wouldn't make sense not to promote it. So, I may be able to go back to it at some point.
DRE: Are you going to be producing other films?
NC: I definitely want to direct. My dad directed this amateur theater troupe that I grew up in, and, since I was three, I was next to him watching and helping him direct which really annoyed the adults [laughs], but Id love to do that. I asked Bob [Altman] if I could sit in the editing room with him and he actually asked me to help him edit the dance pieces. Im just trying to learn. I just did a film with [Two Girls and a Guy writer/director] Jim Toback so I spent four weeks in the editing room with him.
DRE: What's the film?
NC: It's called When Will I Be Loved and we shot it in 12 days with 35 pages of script. He's great, incredibly nutty, intelligent, eloquent and fantastic. So, it was good.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Though she played the pansy ass Julia Salinger on FOXs Party of Five for six years she had grown up ballet dancing but due to becoming rich she had to quit. So co-writing, producing and starring in The Company has been a dream for her. She has been nurturing this film for seven years, it all finally came together when she was able to convince legendary 6 time Oscar nominee Robert Altman to come onboard and direct.
Now The Company is one of this seasons most highly anticipated films and who knows Neve may be collecting an Academy Award for screenwriting next year
The Company opens Christmas Day.
Daniel Robert Epstein: This movie was inspired by your own experience, have you always wanted to make it?
Neve Campbell: I grew up watching Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and the old school dance films where you actually got to see the choreography and dance movement. I never really felt that in the more recent dance films we ever got to see the movement or that any of them were actually about the world of dance itself. To me, that was really important because dance was my life. It was my first career. I did it since I was six. It was so important for me to tell the story.
DRE: Robert Altman got involved because of you. How is that different from other projects?
NC: It feels great to have creative control and obviously, since this was my baby. Its something that Im very passionate about it. It meant a lot to me to have the opportunity to bring people together who I was inspired by--Barbara Turner who is a fantastic writer, the Joffrey Ballet and then, Robert Altman which was a coup. It obviously feels great. In the industry nowadays, it's really difficult to find good scripts and good female roles and it was even more difficult five years ago. But now because of the threat of the actor's strike and because of September 11th, the studios have even less courage. So, Id rather go out, try to make things that mean something to me rather than sit back and read a lot of bad scripts and get frustrated.
DRE: How improvised was this film?
NC: Everything was improvised except for Malcolms [McDowell] stuff. The film was scripted; Barbara had written it and we created the story together. Bob normally throws the scripts out. That's what he does, and this was the one situation where it was incredibly appropriate. There's no way to get 50 cast members [of a dance company] to learn how to act for the first time and do it naturally. So the only way to have the dancers be natural with all the other actors and to have the people that we had in the film be natural was just to have them improvise and say, 'Well, this is your situation and these are stories that you told us about. So, have at it"
DRE: How did you select the Joffrey Ballet?
NC: Barbara and I didn't really want to hit on the typical dance clichs that you see which is the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who gets there or someone fighting for status within a company. The girl who is in the chorus who wants to be a principal dancer. The Joffrey's mentality is everyone's a star, no star. A leading dancer in the company will also do chorus roles and an apprentice who is also great at modern will go and lead in a modern piece. I liked that because I didn't want to deal with the typical clichs. Also, it was only 45 members as opposed to New York City or some of the other companies that have 90 members. So, this was obviously going to be a lot easier to work with. And they have a really eclectic repertoire. They do classics, but they also do modern and contemporary and I thought that would be visually more stimulating.
DRE: Who made the decision what repertoire was filmed?
NC: We all did including Gerry Arpino who's the head of the company. I mean, it behooved us to use a lot of their own repertoire as It was because we only had a three week window to actually shoot all of the dancers. So, to bring in ten new pieces and have the company learn them was going to be really difficult and they have a great repertoire. So, it was Bob, Barbara, Gerry and myself just going through tapes of all the dance pieces and we spent months doing that, and finally choosing stuff.
DRE: What were you looking for in the reps that we're actually shot?
NC: Things that would obviously be visually stimulating, that would be interesting not only to people who are in the dance world and are aware of dance, but also for people who don't know anything about dance. We wanted a variety of things. The Blue Snake piece, which I saw when I was nine, that to me was like a fairy tale. It's made for children. The reason that we thought that it would be good for the movie is the way that Robert Desrosiers choreographs and the way he that takes music after he works with the dancers; we thought that would be a fun way to have the piece in the movie. We were looking for variety some classics and some contemporary.
DRE: How was this experience different from when you were dancing?
NC: Well, I actually got to choose the pieces that I wanted to be in, to choose the choreographers that I wanted to work with and the costumes that I wanted to wear. That's a dancer's dream, but in the end, it's the work. I trained for eight and a half hours a day for six months to do this, and you can't cheat.
DRE: Was it hard to get back up to speed?
NC: Yeah I had 10 years off [laughs] and had to get up to par with the Joffrey Ballet. So, it was definitely a lot of work. I was injured a lot and actually broke my rib three days before I got to Chicago. So, I did the whole movie with a broken rib which was a challenge, but it's my favorite thing in the world to do. It's my passion.
DRE: How did you break the rib?
NC: Learning the "Funny Valentine" piece with my coach in LA. We were learning
it from a tape. We didn't have them with us yet and its hard to learn dance pieces from a tape because first of all, you're watching It backwards, but also to figure out how lifts are done which can be complicated. We were doing a lift wrong. He was lifting me under my rib instead of under my hip.
DRE: What about working with Malcolm McDowell?
NC: Malcolms energy is phenomenal and when he enters a room, it's like immediate bravado, but it's fabulous and real. Hes so talented and loves his work. What was great about this is that he really committed himself. He spent weeks with Gerry Arpino, the head of the company, who his character is loosely based around and went into the financial meetings and inevitably got to a place where he was making financial decisions for the company [laughs]. He really fell in love with the art and the dancers and what we were doing. Im just really grateful that he was a part of it.
DRE: How did he Gerry Arpino feel about it?
NC: Gerry loves the Joffrey so much and he knows how much this film could do for the Company and every dance company struggles; the Joffrey certainly has struggled. So, he was really open and excited about it and had a lot of opinions about how bad ballet movies are. He was happy.
DRE: Do you think people will appreciate this film even though it doesnt have the usual dramatic arc or narrative in the traditional sense?
NC: I don't have apprehension because there's nothing that I can do about it at this point. What Im happy about is that we stuck to our guns and didn't go for the clichs and didn't go for the typical A/B/C plotline; beginning, middle and end. Had we tried to do that, we would've lost a lot of the aspects that we wanted to show about this world. I love this kind of movie where it's a bird's eye view. You feel like you're within it and you're learning something. Maybe with so much reality TV, people who seem to be fascinated by that right now, maybe there will be an interest in taking a look at other people's lifestyles.
DRE: How does this movie resonate with you?
NC: I didn't know what to expect at any point except that I had an idea in my mind of what I wanted to create and I knew to trust Bob; everyone knew to trust Bob. If anything, it was just excitement the whole time. It was my dream come true. Everyone was excited because the dancers had never been in a film before. A lot of the other people who were parts of the company had never been on a set before, and the crew had never seen dance before and for the first couple of days, they tried to pretend that they werent interested and by the third day, they were applauding after every dance piece. Bob was learning about a world and discovering it. The actors were getting to improvise. It was really a magical, inspiring experience for everyone.
DRE: How did you and Bob get together?
NC: From the beginning Barbara and I said that this movie that had to be Altmanesque. Out of anyone Bob is the best at creating worlds. If you look at Nashville or even Gosford Park, he's better at having 80 cast members and telling a story in that way rather than having three in the cast and he prefers that. So, we really felt that he would be best. We didnt think that we would get him, but Barbara had acted for him, actually, years ago [on 1964s TV movie Nightmare in Chicago] so she sent him the script and he said he was intrigued but had other things. He was supposed to make a movie with Paul Newman but he said, "Im interested in hearing about it." We spent a couple of months just coming out and nagging him basically. I talked to him about my passion and why I thought that it'd be interesting and good story to tell and what I loved about it and what amazing athletes these people are. I sent him to ballet classes at the Joffrey Ballet School and showed him dance pieces. I think that once he started meeting the dancers and the Joffrey, he just fell in love with their discipline and artistry.
DRE: While you were making this movie Gosford Park won an Oscar for best screenplay. Because you were involved with the story did you think you could win one?
NC: No. This movie would not have been made right if I had gone and said, "I really want to look for some kind of Academy Award out of this." Then I would've been trying to make myself the lead in the movie and it would've been about my acting experience and my getting to another stage of my career. I really just wanted to tell this story as an ode to dancers. If you do things from the heart and sincerely, then perhaps good things will come out of it. But in no way do I expect awards, and certainly not for my character to get anything. Im not a lead in the movie. It's a very quiet character also and that's what I wanted her to be. Malcolm, perhaps you never know. I hate even thinking about that stuff.
DRE: Are you interested in getting more involved in dance companies, on their boards and so forth?
NC: I may do that with the Joffrey. Although, Gerry just wants me to dance with the company [laughs]. I'll figure it out. We'll try and start this one up in LA. Then, Davis Robertson who's also one of my partners in the movie is a choreographer as well and he's asked me to come dance at Lincoln Center in June. Im not sure Ill be able to do, but maybe. That's a few months training. So, well see.
DRE: What do you think will be the impact of this film on the dance world?
NC: Well, most dancers will tell you that they don't feel theres ever been a great dance film made about the world itself. So, Im hoping that they'll be happy with it. The response that we're getting already from dancers is pretty lovely.
DRE: What are they saying?
NC: They're saying, Thank you for making the first movie about out world that's realistic. which is nice and Thank you for showing choreography and movement and the process.' So that feels good, but hopefully it'll expose the world in a way so that itll help people who don't know about dance be interested or go see a ballet. Who knows, but hopefully, that'll be what happens.
DRE: What was that process of creating the story like?
NC: Ry was actually loosely based around one of the dancers in the company, Trinity Hamilton with the long red hair. She was the one who used to supplement her income by working at that Goth bar that we shot in. Her boyfriend was a chef. Pretty much everything in the film are things that we've taken from the dancers themselves and from the people who are in the company. So, it was loosely based around her, but the experience of a dancer struggling in a company or becoming injured or dealing with trying to have a relationship outside of dance, that's everyone's experience.
DRE: What made you decide to leave the dance world? Was it a lot of the bullshit like we see in the movie?
NC: [laughs] It was sort of a natural progression also I suffered a lot of injuries. Dance is hard on everyone's body, but it's also genetics. My family already had hip problems, and so, I had arthritis by the time I was 20. I also was doing Phantom of the Opera at 15 and doing classical ballet and working with contemporary choreographers in Toronto. At the same time I was also doing commercials, television and that just slowly took over. Then, I got Party of Five when I was 20 and suddenly was working 15 hours a day for nine months and there was no room for dance anymore.
DRE: Are you going to dance now?
NC: It's hard to do it in LA. There's so little there. With Domingo, we can maybe start something up, and with the new Kodak Theater, it'll start growing except that theater is too huge in the auditorium to actually bring in a new company. So, I really don't know how to do it there yet.
DRE: You just have to move to New York.
NC: Yeah. I'm actually looking for a place.
DRE: Talk about other dance films you think were good and others that were on the corny side?
NC: In Turning Point, you get a nice view of what an older dancer or a retired dancer goes through, what that struggle was.
DRE: And Footloose?
NC: Footloose' is fantastic [laughs]. Kevin [Bacon], he shouldve been in our film. I love Kevin. We've worked together.
DRE: I know it made me think of his famous scene in Wild Things.
Are actors wussies compared to dancers?
NC: Absolutely [laughs]. What it takes to be a dancer and be disciplined and to get a place in a company with as many great dancers as there are and as few companies as there are, it takes a lot of work.
DRE: When you went from dancing to acting were you surprised by all the bullshit?
NC: Some actors can be very spoiled and with what Id experienced since I was six years old yeah, absolutely. It was astonishing to me in some ways how easy it was.
DRE: Because of movies like The Craft, Scream andWild Things.
NC: Everyone always get that face when they mention Wild Things.
DRE: I love that flick. So because of those movies you have a strong Goth following, have you encountered those fans before?
NC: I suppose. I suppose that I get a whole mix of it. I haven't noticed it too much, really.
DRE: Were you ever into being Goth?
NC: I was when I was a kid, I was going to grow up have black hair, a pasty white face and a lot of earrings but that didn't really go with ballet. I only have two. [shows her ears] I only made it to two and then, I got infections and couldn't go any further [laughs] and no tattoos.
DRE: What are your musical tastes now?
NC: I listen to a whole mix of stuff. Being from the dance world, I did ballet, jazz, modern, contemporary, Flamenco, and hip hop; I trained in all of those, and so, love all kinds of music. Obviously, I spent most of my time listening to classical piano every morning, but I like some contemporary bands like Five for Fighting and Ben Folds, and I also like Celtic music and Scottish stuff.
DRE: Are you doing your own choreography to Celtic Music?
NC: Domingo Rubio who was my partner in the "Funny Valentine" piece in the movie, actually left the company to try and start up a company in Los Angeles.
So, he's asked me to help him with that. We've been working on choreography but it's hard. People keep asking me if Im going to go and dance now, and truthfully, if you're going to be a professional, classical ballet dancer, you have to be training all the time, eight hours a day. So, there may be times where Ill go and perform and train for a few months, but Im going to stay in it in other ways, helping other people with their companies.
DRE: Would you like to do a big musical?
NC: I was just offered [the Broadway show] Chicago a month ago, but I wasn't able to do it because it was a choice between actually promoting this film or actually doing that, and after seven years of developing a movie. It wouldn't make sense not to promote it. So, I may be able to go back to it at some point.
DRE: Are you going to be producing other films?
NC: I definitely want to direct. My dad directed this amateur theater troupe that I grew up in, and, since I was three, I was next to him watching and helping him direct which really annoyed the adults [laughs], but Id love to do that. I asked Bob [Altman] if I could sit in the editing room with him and he actually asked me to help him edit the dance pieces. Im just trying to learn. I just did a film with [Two Girls and a Guy writer/director] Jim Toback so I spent four weeks in the editing room with him.
DRE: What's the film?
NC: It's called When Will I Be Loved and we shot it in 12 days with 35 pages of script. He's great, incredibly nutty, intelligent, eloquent and fantastic. So, it was good.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
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her is a perfect actress!