Neve Campbell Interview for The Company 5/9/04

Star Neve pays her dues to dance
Belfast Telegraph 5/9/04

    If she hadn't become an up-and-coming film star, Neve Campbell might have been a famed ballerina...and her love of dance has now been transferred to the big screen in director Robert Altman's The Company. The film is the story of the behind-the-scenes lives and loves of the dancers at a fictional Chicago company.
    Indeed, so much does Canadian-born Campbell love dancing that she co-wrote the screenplay because she wanted to play Ry, a promising young dancer on the verge of the big-time who still has to work on the side as a waitress. Campbell knows all about the pitfalls and highlights of the hard-working, demanding world of dance.
    She spent her early years - from nine-years-old to 14-years-old - at the National Ballet School of Canada: "I started dancing when I was six, after seeing The Nutcracker. It's the best dance school in the world, but an extremely competitive one, and there was a lot of pressure for a child. It had an extremely back-stabbing mentality, and a lot of favoritism. I wanted to be there because I wanted to be a dancer. I love to dance, and that was my dream. When you're at that school, it means you've beaten off 2,000 people to get in, so you're determined to stick it out. For me, that was a mammoth decision, because I had a nervous breakdown when I was 14. By that time, I had just about given up on my dream of being a top dancer, and I realized I'd completely lost myself and had no friends and was very unhappy with my life. I simply couldn't have continued if I'd stayed there."
    If you think dancing is glamorous, just note this - Neve once had to dance with several broken ribs, she has had arthritis in her neck and hips, surgery on her feet, a snapped hip, tendonitis, shin splints, bursitis...but, still, for her the power of dance is such that she just had to get The Company made as a tribute to and celebration of the art form (actually, in Northern Ireland, dance is the fastest-growing of the art forms).
    For Altman, one of Hollywood's greatest-ever directors, dance is also a much-revered art form. Famous for his caustic, anti-establishment films, he has made The Company with a great deal of warmth, and as a sincere tribute to all the world's hard-working dancers. The film uses the famous Joffrey Ballet of Chicago to tell this story of the professional and private lives of the dancers. If Campbell is the star of this quality drama, she is given a close run by Malcolm McDowell, who plays the company's co-founder and renowned choreographer, with some terrific one-liners.
    For Campbell, though, it is clear that the world of dance has been good to her, and has prepared her for screen stardom: "I was the youngest person ever cast in The Phantom of the Opera, in the ballet corps."
    Her first big film role was as victim Sidney Prescott in the l996 Scream and in Wild Things (l998), Three to Tango (l999), Panic (2000) and Against the Current (2002): "Even if people know little about dance, this film will, I'm sure, appeal to them. It's about striving to achieve your dreams, no matter how hard it is. It also contains some absolutely wonderful dancing...it's a great story and it illustrates the joy of dancing."