You know Rose McGowan from movies like Planet Terror and Scream, but these days, she's not
appearing on screen much at all. Here are some of the reasons Hollywood doesn't seem
to cast Rose McGowan anymore.
In 2011, McGowan sat down with People magazine to discuss her unconventional upbringing.
She was born into a cult called The Children of God, who were camped out on a large property
in Italy at the time. At age nine, she fled with her father and sisters, though escaping
wasn't easy. She admitted,
Her dad eventually got them back to the States and Rose started on her path to Hollywood.
According to McGowan, her life in Tinseltown wasn't that different. In 2019, she told The Guardian,
McGowan went as far as calling Hollywood a "major authoritarian regime" in her interview,
claiming the industry controls everything from your appearance to what you say in public.
Similarly, speaking out against the leaders is a big no-no. She said,
Staying in line has never been McGowan's style, and her professional prospects have evidently
suffered as a result.
On-set affairs have been known to derail movies in the past, and that's exactly what happened
with 2007's Planet Terror. Director Robert Rodriguez and his wife Elizabeth were known
as "the power couple of Texas film" in their home state, idolized for pioneering the, quote
"new Latino cinematic sensibility," according to Texas Monthly. That all came to an end
when Elizabeth discovered that her husband of 16 years had been having a brazen affair
with McGowan. According to a Variety report at the time, production on the movie was suspended
for a month after news of the scandal broke.
Elizabeth was apparently the last person to find out about it. A source told Page Six,
They went public with their relationship and announced their engagement in October 2007,
but two years later McGowan backed out of the wedding and split from Rodriguez.
McGowan has openly discussed the issue of male misogyny within the industry on several
occasions, but when she joined Bret Easton Ellis on his podcast in 2014, she claimed
that gay men are, quote, "more misogynistic" than straight men. She said,
As CNN reported, the backlash against McGowan was huge, with countless Twitter users expressing
their shock and outrage at her comments. One person wrote in a since-removed tweet,
In the end, the growing pressure forced her into making an apology, but in true McGowan
fashion, she refused to hang her head in shame. She told Huffington Post,
McGowan caused a stir in Hollywood in 2015 when she took to Twitter to complain about
a sexist script she had been sent by her agent. The screenplay came with a wardrobe note detailing
what actresses needed to wear to the audition in order to be considered for the role. The
note read,
McGowan didn't name the movie, but she left her followers in no doubt over who the lead
actor was when she tweeted,
"A-hahaha, shut up."
According to a second tweet, McGowan's agent let her go after discovering she had made
the casting requirements public. She wrote,
With a media storm growing, the actress admitted that the real problem wasn't even about Adam
Sandler specifically.
"He didn't do it, it was the casting office, and the thing, it's just institutionalized
stupidity, and so many people, it went past and it was probably a girl who had to type
that out."
She also decided to address the issue head on during an interview with Entertainment
Weekly, saying,
In terms of show business beefs, 2015 was a busy year for McGowan, and by the time it
came to a close, her chances of lasting in Tinseltown looked slimmer than ever. Her reputation
was getting dragged through the mud by the LGBT community for a second time after some
inflammatory comments she made about Caitlyn Jenner, who had just been named as one of
Glamour magazine's Women of the Year.
According to The Mary Sue, McGowan reacted angrily to the news in a since-deleted Facebook
post, saying,
Some commentators accused McGowan of being a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, or
TERF, but the actress rejected that notion, calling the idea that she was trans-phobic
"laughable" in a follow-up post. She wrote,
McGowan's criticism of male-dominated Hollywood took an even more serious tone when she revealed
that she'd been raped by a well-known and highly respected studio head.
She joined in with the hashtag "Why Women Dont Report" on Twitter and explained that
her rape was not taken seriously because of the characters she had previously played on
screen. She explained,
The actress followed that up by revealing that a former partner had actually sold one
of her movies to her rapist for distribution despite what he did, and that what happened
to her was pretty much common knowledge in Tinseltown. She added,
When McGowan went public with her explosive assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein,
she helped set off a chain of events that would ultimately see the producer convicted
of third-degree rape and a first-degree criminal sexual act. She told The Guardian,
"I don't know about you but when you've had consensual sex you don't really fill up with
tears afterwards."
She spoke out in private long before the Times published its exposé, however. According
to McGowan, Weinstein's alleged assault on her had been an "open secret" in Hollywood
for years. She tweeted,
To add insult to injury, Weinstein apparently blacklisted McGowan, deeply damaging her career.
In 2019, she told The Hollywood Reporter,
McGowan helped get the ball rolling, but she was far from the only person that spoke out
against Weinstein - by the time he was convicted in February 2020, more than 90 women had publicly
accused the prolific producer of sex crimes. Speaking to The Guardian, McGowan paid tribute
to the numerous stars who have allegedly suffered at Weinstein's hands, both personally and
professionally. She said,
According to McGowan, the Miramax co-founder isn't the only predator in the industry. During
an interview with journalist Ronan Farrow, McGowan revealed that another "prominent"
Hollywood male took advantage of her long before Weinstein did - when she was just 15
years old. She admitted,
McGowan's anger is not solely reserved for Hollywood's men. When the allegations against
Weinstein broke and the Me Too movement gained momentum, several actresses started wearing
black outfits to awards ceremonies as a show of solidarity. McGowan wasn't buying into
it. According to The BBC, she wrote in a since-deleted tweet,
Streep responded by claiming that she "did not know" what Weinstein had been up to.
In 2020, McGowan went after another female peer. After Natalie Portman wore a cape with
the names of the female directors she believed had been snubbed to the Academy Awards, McGowan
said on Facebook, in part,
McGowan later apologized for singling Portman out, but she didn't remove her original post.
McGowan is refusing to allow the Harvey Weinstein scandal to stop her from working in the business
she loves, but she's admitted that she probably won't find real closure until the shamed producer
has passed. She admitted on the Shut Up Evan podcast,
She seems to have accepted that Hollywood isn't interested in casting her anymore, which
is why she's decided to direct movies instead. A defiant McGowan made her debut behind the
camera in 2014 with a short film called Dawn, and as of 2020, she's ready to helm her first
feature length film, an animated comedy called Pomerania. It's a kids' movie on the surface,
but the film explores issues that affect people of all ages. She told The Hollywood Reporter,
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