The vampy and wild Rose McGowan is certainly one to watch this season, as she stars in the summer blockbuster Conan the Barbarian. vivienne tang speaks with the sharp-tongued actress and discovers that she’s not all thorns

Many people came to know actress Rose McGowan through the hit TV seriesCharmed, in which she played a witch. Others remember her short but impactful scene in the very first Scream movie, when she was crushed to death by a garage door while caught in a pet hatch. McGowan has never been one to shy away from challenging roles, such as that of Cherry Darling, who had a machine-gun leg, in Robert Rodriguez’ and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse. The actress also turned heads at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards in an almost-invisible dress, covering her behind with only a few strands of rhinestones and leaving little to the imagination. And she dated shock-rocker Marilyn Manson for three and a half years, reinforcing her image as a gloomy goth screen goddess. Next up: a turn as a sorceress in Conan the Barbarian.

Your new movie, Conan the Barbarian, is coming out soon. I believe you’re playing an evil witch.
Not quite. She’s half sorceress, half human. She’s kind of strangely in love with her father and will do anything to please him.

So she’s got a bit of an Electra complex?
Yes, she has a complete Electra complex, not just a bit [laughs]. But it’s good. It adds some pizazz to the role.

Did you enjoy making the movie? You all had very interesting costumes.
I actually had a blast. I had so much fun, and believe me, there were moments when I was just kind of standing outside of my body, looking at the whole situation and just thinking, “What must we look like for people who have no idea what is going on? We look so insane right now.” But we just had a blast. It’s quite a spectacle.

I heard that you spent some six hours in the make-up chair.
Yeah, I started at two in the morning, and then I started work with everybody else around seven or eight, depending…and then it took an hour to take off afterwards. I think she looks pretty amazing. She’s very majestic.

You’ve portrayed a number of roles over the years, and you somewhat specialise in bigscreen vamps. What would be your dream role?
I can’t time travel, but my dream role would have been Barbara Stanwyck in DoubleIndemnity or Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. As far as that’s concerned now, I would like to do something silly in front of my bridesmaids. I can’t say that’s a dream role, but it would be fun to switch gears.

What are you currently working on?
I’m about to go and do a television movie for JJ Abrams’ father [Gerald], and it’s a total switch of gears to play this woman. It was a big, sensational case in the United States. There was this pastor and his wife, and she was very meek and mousy looking, very frumpy and middle American. And nobody can exactly explain why, but she shot him in the back. So the movie is all about her trial. It’s interesting that this person could not be less vampy.

I guess many people would argue that you have a little bit of a wild side.
You would be wrong.

So how much of that image is actually you?
Well, if you actually think about it, I’ve never been arrested, I’ve never been busted for drugs, never got arrested for drunk driving, never gotten out of the car without my underwear on. There’s actually nothing that I have done in my life that would actually fit the bad-girl image. That’s the funniest part of it all, and all of my friends know. That’s why they laugh.

What would you say has been your most memorable role so far?
Personally what I’ve found the most gratifying, for sure, was doing the Grindhousemovies, and Cherry Darling specifically, the character with the machine-gun leg.

Do you think it’s becoming tougher and tougher, especially for women in your industry, to look the part and be a certain way? Is there much pressure?
I read somewhere, I can’t remember which actress though, but she said that if she wasn’t acting, she would be one or two sizes bigger. I don’t know. I might be one size bigger, maybe. I’m not sure. I work out really hard, and I like that. I try to just stick my head in the sand, because I start hating everything if I start thinking about it too much. So I just kind of pretend that it doesn’t exist. And I travel a lot. I’m not in Los Angeles very often.

The Conan the Barbarian premiere is coming up soon, but I read that you hate premieres.
It’s not that I hate them. They make me sick to my stomach. I get ill. I just suck it up, but I’ve gone down the red carpet with people and they tell me to stop vibrating, because I start shaking so hard. You can’t tell from the photos, but when they’re screaming at you, and you’re basically stepping out for the world to judge you, it makes me sick to my stomach every time.

Tell us something that nobody knows about you.

I have the ugliest pyjamas in the world, because they’re huge and because they have things like dogs printed all over them, or cows and sheep. Half the time they have a hole in the knee, and I’m really cold. I take the bottoms and tuck them over the top. I put the shirt inside. My friend is literally like, “I don’t know how you get anybody to sleep with you.” [Laughs] There’s something I like about having the same kind of pyjamas I had when I was nine years old. I can’t help myself. Only my good, good friends know that. They’re like, “What a way to ruin an image!”