Rose McGowan is chatty. She’s also smart and unafraid to speak her mind. In Jawbreaker, which opens February 19th, Rose displays a wicked charm that makes you want her to get away with murder. Literally. In this interview, Shout talks with Rose about her career, her favorite breakfast cereal, closeted gay high school quarterbacks, guys trying to knock her house down with sledgehammers, her relationship with Marilyn Manson, and a dozen other unusual topics. You won’t find this kind of stuff in People magazine…

By Dennis Brabham
Trancribed by Brandon (thanks so much!)

In Jawbreaker you play a bitchy type gal. I’ve seen you in a couple of other flicks like Scream, and it seems like you play that type of character often. In sort of a turnabout from other actresses, do you ever wish you got to play the nice girl?
Well you’re singing to the choir. Is that the right term? No, I don’t think I was bitchy in Scream, actually. She just had personality, whereas the other characters didn’t have so much. She was sassy…that’s a better way to describe it. Courtney is just completely amoral. I like to think of Courtney in Jawbreaker as basically being a prequel to The Last Seduction (for those of you who haven’t seen it, Linda Fiorentino plays a seductive bitch on wheels). I would love to play the nice girl but I’ve only been acting for four years. Winona and those others, they’ve been doing it since they were eight and nine years old. I hope that within the next four years I’ll be able to do a bigger variety. It’s kind of like any job when you’re working your way up the ladder. I definitely didn’t want to do another high school role, another bitchy role, but Jawbreaker was so funny and it was just kind of pop art in a way.

How did the shoot for Jawbreaker go?
It was really fun, but exhausting. For every five lines I had, someone else had only one line. It was a lot of dialogue for me and 16-hour days, six days a week, and my eyes were just rolling in the back of my head.

Did you improvise the line where you said something like “never send a rose unless you paint it black and send it out as a warning?”
No I didn’t, but I thought it was funny. My favorite part of that scene was when I looked over at the Karen Carpenter table and all the anorexic girls were staring at one raisin.

I was just happy once I saw William Katt, TV’s Greatest American Hero, was in the film, but then he had like two seconds. That kind of upset me.
I’m sorry. But it was funny every time he was on the set, everybody had that theme song going through their head, Believe it or not… I didn’t even know the show and it was going through my head.

You may not know where I’m going with this, but just follow me for a second. Can I ask what your sign is?
Virgo. September 5th.

Really? I’m September 7th. How cool is that?
I like the Virgos, Dennis. We’re so much smarter than everyone else. At least we like to think so.

I was going to point out that there might have been some bitter irony if you had been born a Pisces, because as I understand it, you don’t really like fish.
I hate fish. I’m a very picky Virgo and that kind of goes in line with that. I don’t really know too much about science, but my brother is a Virgo also and he and I are the antithesis of each other. He’s very laid back: he eats anything, so maybe you’re more like that. I’m not like that at all. I’m an equal opportunity food hater. I’m in Australia with him right now and he’s like “I want to take you to this exciting Mexican restaurant where they eat monkey heads,” and I’m saying “No thanks, I’ve seen Faces of Death.”

You’re a big fan of The Howard Stern Show?
I love Howard Stern.

I was listening in once and someone said something about you and Ben Affleck having problems because he said some unkind things about you?
Yeah, I don’t believe it’s true. I know Ben. It was just some weird caller that said Ben was drunk in a bar and he was saying some nasty stuff about me. First of all, it doesn’t sound like the Ben I know because Ben and I get along quit amicably. My boyfriend used it as an excuse about how Good Will Hunting was a metaphor for dick sucking, which you know is probably true. I can’t say I liked that movie. The sheep liked it.

Isn’t that what’s more subversive, that you can be retarded and still live out this weird fantasy version of getting everything out of the American dream? At least in Good Will Hunting you had to be a genius.
Nah, in Good Will Hunting all you had to be was trite.

Ever regret some of the things that you’ve said in print? Like Tori Spelling needs plastic surgery to stay so young looking on 90210?
I did not say that! I like Tori Spelling. I don’t know her, but I like her. I think she’s really cool. I actually wanted to write to her and I’ve never written anybody letters. But I saw her in The House Of Yes and I thought she was so great that I wanted to write her a letter, just because I feel everybody always bags on her. Granted, she’s a millionairess, but I still root for the underdog. People have asked me to slam Pamela Anderson and stuff like that and I think, why would I bother? The list of other people I want to slam is far longer, and it’s not people that are obvious, thanks. There are enough people taking hits at me and I know it doesn’t feel so great. As in most things, people tend to forget there’s a soul behind that image and it really does hurt.

So maybe you were misquoted about Mother Theresa as well?
No I don’t like her. I wasn’t misquoted. She’s a furry little troll doll and I don’t care that she’s dead. I still hate her. My friend was saying to me the other day, “But she’s dead.” I don’t care. I still hate her.

So what did Mother Theresa ever do to you?
I don’t know, but you know, I hate her even more because she’s a Virgo. That makes me mad. How dare you stand on my sign. I don’t really hate her, but I don’t like her. There’s something that struck me as very fake about her. She was helping the poor and dying, but she was also helping to perpetuate it because of the Catholic church beliefs. She was just a representative of that, where they just want you to keep having kids and they keep getting sick and dying. It’s a vicious cycle. They don’t mind taking care of people on the way out as long as they can get ‘em when they come into the world. To a big extent, I think that’s the same thing with the ridiculous pro-lifers.

Anyone else on your list?
Pro-lifers. Probably more than Mother Theresa. I have a good trick I use for people I really hate. I have a paper shredder and if I have pictures or letters from someone I hate, I put them through the shredder. Shredders cost about twenty bucks and they’re worth the investment. There’s a weird release I get putting them through the shredder, much more than just ripping their picture up. Try it.

Can you tell us how you and (boyfriend) Marilyn Manson met?
I’d heard for a couple of years from some really weird sources that he’d had a crush on me. And I thought “Uck. That’s the ugliest person I’ve ever seen.” I thought he was disgusting. But then I met him, so of course I marched up to him and said “hey, I heard you had a crush on me.” And since then we’ve just never left each others side.

Now I know this isn’t so, but people keep asking me, so for the record can you clear this up. Marilyn Manson doesn’t really have breast implants, does he?
Those people are stupid. You live in New York for Christ’s sake. If I was gonna go for somebody with breast implants I might as well go for Pamela Anderson because hers are bigger.

You and Joaquin Phoenix were in the same commune, did you know him?
Well he was in the Venezuelan chapter and I was in the Italian chapter. I grew up in a hippie soap opera. It was whatever… I guess you don’t realize that you didn’t have the white picket fence until other people point it out.

In many cases the white picket fence isn’t any better, it’s just different.
In my opinion, usually much more sadistic and weird things go on in the suburbs. In school I was always picked on as the person who was presumed to have alcohol and drugs, which I never did, but it was just because of the way I looked. Meanwhile there’s the jock alcoholic sitting across from me with his flask inside his uniform.

Maybe he was trying to hard to please daddy?
I don’t know. Maybe he was gay.

Now that commune you were in, can you clear that up, because some people have said it was actually a cult.
Oh yeah, it’s still one of the biggest ones around.

How’d you get out of that, my cult knowledge is limited, but generally they don’t like people to leave, do they?
No they don’t. We snuck out in the middle of the night. A lot of kids are disappearing into child slavery rings. If you had a big family, one kid might “disappear” to keep everyone else in line. It would work, too. We were living in a house once after we escaped and woke up to this guy trying to hammer down my bedroom wall. Some guy named Pepo. Crazy fuckers. Even at a young age I knew this was ridiculous.

Some dude was trying to sledgehammer down your bedroom wall?
Yeah, he was climbing around outside on the windows trying to know down our house. Good luck!

Holy friggin Joe! I grew up in a Brooklyn housing project and I don’t have any stories to compare to that. You win!
(Laughs) It’s all a big race. I know, weird, but it’s just funny now. There was some big culture shock when I came to America, though.

Because you grew up in Italy, you didn’t speak English until you were 15, right?
Oh no, I could, but you can gather more information if people don’t think you speak their language. Even now I go into a nail salon and they’re all speaking Korean I say “I know what you’re talking about and I don’t appreciate it.” and they get this terrible stricken look on their faces, like they’ve been caught. And I don’t know what the hell they were saying, but I pretend I know.

I went to a bar in Chinatown and I’d learned the phrase “Gwailo Fann” which kinda translates to white devil imperialist bastard or something like that.
And you’ll hear them say it?

Every other word. I feel like I’m privy to something now.
That’s actually a good band name. “White Devil” should be the band name and “Imperialist Bastard” should be the first LP or CD.

Were you in two movies with Pauly Shore, Bio-Dome and Encino Man?
No, only once. You probably got that from the internet. There’s this one site that says I’m five foot one and it probably says I did this movie called Cross Country. First of all, I’m five four and a half which is considerably taller than five foot one thank you, and I was visiting a friend of mine on the set of Encino Man. I’ve never even heard of the movie called Cross Country. I do enjoy journalists asking about it all the time (laughs). They ask if Parker Posey starred in it and I say “I don’t know, I wasn’t in it.” I’ve tried forever to get it cleared up, but nobody listens.

Once the voluminous readership of Shout picks up on it, it’ll be cleared up immediately.
Right. I’ll get that question again next month.

At one point you had some really weird compulsions and quirks… Had?
All right still have, like saying stuff backwards. I read stuff backwards compulsively. Everything. Street sings, paragraphs, books…It got kind of annoying after a while. If you said your name to me I would just blurt it out backwards.

Dennis Brabham?
No, don’t get me started on my compulsion again. Please don’t start me on my downward cycle.

Do you still have a compulsive hunger for Grape-Nuts, because I can sympathize with that.
I’ve let go of Grape-Nuts, actually. Now I’m onto Honey Bunches of Oats with almonds.

How about Frosted Mini Wheats?
I liked them a long time ago when I was little. But we always got the generic cereals in the bag, because I had six brothers and sisters, so it was never Frosted Mini Wheats. It was Sugar Shredded Things or whatever. It was more of a volume issue than a quality one.

What’s coming up for you? I’ve heard you give an intense performance in a movie called Southie?
That’s actually a completely different role. I play this broken down alcoholic in South Boston. it’s a tough Irish family drama. I kinda did it more for the experience to play a really external kind of character. I’ve been turning stuff down because I don’t want to repeat myself. I’m waiting for people to get a clue that I’m capable of playing other things.

Would you ever do TV?
I don’t know, it’s never come across my path. I would like a show where I could tell people what to do: “Rose Sets it Straight!” Check it out!

Like a hard core version of Clarissa Explains it All?
Pretty much, but I have a feeling I’d wind up on public access.

It’s our Valentine’s Day issue. Can you give our readers any advice on love?
Ummm. Put on some Barry White? Seriously, I think you should basically be an honorable person. If you do something crappy, you’re the person who has to live with it. It’s not worth it. And, go buy your girl a present you lazy slacker bastard!