It’s a bit darn silly to think you can size up anyone’s character from a professionally shot and styled photograph but especially an actor’s. Art and artifice drop false clues to throw you off the trail. But occasionally photos can support a suspicion about someone formed from what you know of their life. If you think something about Rose McGowan’s eyes suggests a woman who can look after herself, you wouldn’t be far wrong.

A Hollywood actress go, McGowan isn’t at all Hollywood. In a town glut with second and third generation celebrity where many famous names turn out to be sons or daughters of other famous names, she stands out as someone who made her own way. There were no soft introductions to directors at parental parties nor a sumptuous Beverly Hills pied a terre paid by for by daddy when she was a teenager. The star of Scream, Charmed and the Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez double feature Grindhouse had to make to do with self-reliance and the kind of looks and talent that demand attention. She was not even raised in the States.

The daughter of an American writer mother and Irish artist father, Rose McGowan was born near Florence in Italy. One of six siblings, she grew up in a commune and traveled around Europe extensively. As a young child she modeled for Vogue Bambini and other magazines. So far that is not so unusual for someone in her line of work: creative parents, unconventional bo-ho upbringing and a smattering of crop up on the early biographies of quite a few screen stars. Where Rose’s story begins to diverge is after the McGowans moved to the north-western States in 1983. Someone who says she still does not think of her identity “in a black and white way”, she did not find the change easy.

“When we moved I refused to speak English for a while,” she says. “It wasn’t that I couldn’t speak it, but I was nine and just didn’t react well and didn’t see why I should.”

That’s understandable. Moving to a new country and new ways of living is hard for kids and to add another disruption, her parents separated. Afterwards McGowan spent most of her time living in Oregon and Washington state. Then the woman who was to make her name playing in Indie movies exhibited her own strongly independent streak. She declared herself free of her parents in her mid-teens and roved the Pacific north-west.

Think about that a moment. It’s one thing to flee the nest, head for the nearest metropolis and crash on a friend’s couch until you can find a job and a place of your own. Everyone does that, though maybe not aged fifteen. A fair number spend a couple of days roughing it without a settled place to stay. It takes quite another kind of person to stick with their decision to look after themselves when that become dire, dirty and dangerous. Your options have to be limited. You also need to be able to trust yourself to get you through.

Let’s not go overboard. Do a little probing in the cuttings and the impression is formed rapidly of a highly-intelligent, well-read, woman tarred with a sloppy brush that gets sploshed over the famous and obscure alike. It’s the one colored by the assumption that if you can cope with tough shit and stand up for yourself, you must be hard as hell and get a kick out of rough times. As you read about McGowan’s career, remember that nobody is compartmentalized so easily.

But experience does become another resource to draw upon.

Following a sting at art school in Seattle, Rose moved to LA where a chance meeting with a friend of a friend outside a gym lead to her being cast as the bitter-sweet hardcase Amy Blue in Gregg Araki’s 1995 black comedy The Doom Generation. That stumble into acting led to a nomination for a Best Debut Performance award and the heavy supporting role of Tatum in the 1997 hit horror-comedy Scream, in which she died a death that had people wary of garage doors for months.

More indie work flowed in, with McGowan usually playing sassy I-can-take-whatever-you’ve-got types, most notably as cruel but cool accidental killer Courtney Shane in Jawbreaker. For that she was nominated for an MTV movie Best Villain trophy. Two years later in 2001, she joined the cast of Charmed, the TV show about young witches coping with the blues of modern life, as Paige Halliwell: a character vote Favorite Sister in the 2005 Family Television awards.

Hang on, you may say to yourself, ‘Favorite Sister?’ That doesn’t sound right for the wild beauty of gritty urban movies.

Nor do acting in Brian de Palma’s drama The Black Dahlia and playing Ann-Margaret in a mini series about Elvis. If stereotypes are your thing, don’t worry. In Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror segment of Grindhouse, McGowan plays a stripper with a machine gun replacement for an amputated leg. It’s called acting; it’s called pretending for a living so you can pay a better class of bill. Which takes us to an August day, 9pm in London and a journalist there spending twenty minutes on a cell phone speaking to McGowan at her agent’s LA office, where it’s lunch time. You see, even the impression the celebrity interviews give that they’re face to face and between best buddies is pretence- almost always.

McGowan has recently returned from a trip to Italy and it has left a clear mark. Staying at Villa Costello on Lake Como appears to have been especially memorable. She names it as the most opulent place she can think of at the moment. A little later she observes, “It doesn’t matter how good the restaurant you go to [elsewhere], the food always tasted better in a little place in Italy.”

Choosing an item that encapsulates opulence stumps her for a while then she replies, “I can’t afford one but I’d like a private jet just because it’s as close as you can get now to that age of air travel where you had streamer trunks and everyone dressed up to fly.” Then she adds, “A trip on the Orient Express would be pretty opulent.”

The journalist asks what McGowan’s favorite sound from nature is. “Wind blowing through trees,” is her answer. As for natural sensation, she says, “lazing through really soft grass.” Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is the piece of music.

In the first section of Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, McGowan plays the girlish and blonde Pam but in Rodriguez’ segment she is that brunette with the machine gun leg. Which hairstyle did she prefer?

“I am a read head at the moment,” Rose replies. “The blonde hair looked beautiful but I don’t know what happened in processing or wherever but on the screen it didn’t come over so well.”

Her choice of favorite clothes is eclectic. “I’d love one of those 1930s long satin gowns and I love my Acne jeans,” she says. “I bought my first pair in London, from Browns.”

Before Rose McGowan came into her agent’s office she ate corn on the cob, a food she liked a lot, and a hard boiled egg. “Hardly opulent but…” her voice trails off. In a way, that could describe this interview. There isn’t much in the way of new riches and insights here but maybe there never are. Maybe these photographs, combined with the message ‘never assume’, do tell you as much as can be told so briefly about beautiful, clever, complicated person.