The Tragedy Of Neve Campbell

Neve Campbell might just be one of the unluckiest celebs in the industry. Sure, she is a famous actress and is beloved for her role in the show "Party of Five" and movies like "The Craft," "Wild Things," and of course, the "Scream" franchise, but Campbell's life hasn't always been perfect. From her roots as a dancer in Canada to her time as a Hollywood star, she has been plagued by injuries. Many may not feel very sympathetic toward her now, but some of the injuries Campbell has suffered from are baffling.

Furthermore, her status as a Hollywood A-lister and horror icon has brought her vast amounts of stress and unwanted attention from stalkers. After five (soon to be six) movies, her "Scream" character Sidney Prescott may be a pro at dealing with psychos, but that's surely not something Campbell ever wanted to bleed into her real life. Even though she has been a major Hollywood star for over thirty years, it wasn't all glitz and glamor and for Neve Campbell.

Neve Campbell was born in Guelph, Ontario, Canada in 1973. Unfortunately, her parents divorced when she was only two years old. Campbell seemed to be an ambitious child and spent her younger years focused on ballet, which famously requires a lot of time, effort, and dedication. However, even for a hardworking and seemingly headstrong child like Campbell, dealing with divorced parents is always difficult.

The actress admitted as much in an interview with The Times in 2004 while reflecting on the pressures she felt as a young dancer. She said, "I just could not cope with the expectations and pressures. I was too insecure and had problems with my parents' divorce that I could not really recognise at the time." Campbell has not talked about her parent's divorce that much throughout her career, but this comment points to it likely affecting her as a child.

Neve Campbell started dancing when she was six years old and eventually got accepted to the National Ballet School when she was nine. Therefore, most of her childhood was dedicated to ballet. She loved her time at the National Ballet School and even had dreams of pursuing a career as a ballerina, but she has been open about how being a dancer brought many hardships. Speaking with People, she said, "I had just been having some mental challenges, just difficult to find the balance between wanting a childhood and following this dream. I had had already quite a bit of injury. From 9 years old, at the National Ballet School, I was in physiotherapy weekly." Because of her constant injuries, Campbell made the difficult decision to quit dancing when she was 14.

In an interview with The Washington Post in 2004, Campbell detailed the wide array of injuries she has suffered from throughout her life, most of which are from dancing. She said, "I've had bunions. I've had broken toes. I've had fallen arches. I've had strained tendons in my arches. I've had tendinitis in my Achilles'. I've had torn ligaments and sprained ankles in both ankles. Shinsplints [sic]. Pulled calves ... I've had sciatic problems in my back and the arthritis in my neck. Oh, and I sprained my wrists."

It's not a surprise that dealing with injuries such as these led to Campbell quitting ballet. Dealing with this kind of pain and weekly physiotherapy sessions would likely be incredibly difficult for a young child to handle, no matter how much they love dancing. Thankfully, Campbell credits her dancing career with helping her "stay sane" in Hollywood. "All of the discipline that I have, I take from dance," she told People.

Being a dancer is clearly incredibly difficult on the body, but it can't compare to being mauled by a bear. Yes, you read that right. When she was just 17 years old, Neve Campbell was attacked by a bear while filming a movie in Canada. She reflected on this horrific experience during an appearance on "The Kelly Clarkson Show" in 2022. To film a scene in which her character was being chased by a bear, Campbell was instructed to dip her hand in honey and start running through a forest. Once she made it to a specific tree, she was told to stick her hand out so the bear would stop and focus on the honey.

However, things didn't go according to plan. Campbell explained, "I put my hand out and the bear is not slowing down and he's not coming for my hand. He grabs me by the leg and he pulls me through the forest. My mother was visiting set and she's screaming. The whole crew is frozen because nobody can believe what's happening. All I can think to say is, 'He's biting me,' like it's not obvious."

Once the bear wrangler started throwing rocks at the animal, it finally stopped attacking Campbell. Thankfully, she wasn't seriously injured, but this situation could have ended much worse for her. Surprisingly, Campbell was willing to perform the risky stunt again after being attacked by the bear, which proves how dedicated she was as a young actress.

After starring in various projects as a teenager in Canada, Neve Campbell moved to Los Angeles after being cast in a main role in the show "Party of Five." This show was a major success and ran from 1994 to 2000. Campbell also starred in many films during this time, such as "The Craft" and the first two "Scream" movies. On the surface, everything seemed to be going great for her during her early years in Hollywood. However, her busy schedule and the demands of being a rising actress resulted in her developing alopecia when she was just 23 years old.

In an interview with The Daily Mail, Campbell admitted that the late '90s were a very difficult time for her. She said, "I was horribly overworked and going through a divorce. Also, I had stalkers and started receiving threatening mail. I was so distressed by it all that my hair started falling out. Life hasn't always been a bowl of cherries." Experiencing hair loss at such a young age likely added even more stress to Campbell's life, especially considering the pressures of maintaining one's image to have continued success in Hollywood.

Around this time, when Neve Campbell was overworked, stressed, and losing hair, she also reportedly had repeated encounters with a ghost. In 1996, Campbell moved into a Hollywood Hills home with her first husband, Jeff Colt. Since they moved in not long after she finished filming the first "Scream" movie, which would cement her as a horror icon, it seemed tragically ironic that the home turned out to be haunted.

Campbell discussed the ghost that resided in her first Los Angeles home in an interview with The Daily Mail in 2011. She said, "It turned out that it was inhabited by the ghost of a woman who had been murdered there in 1991. Doors would repeatedly slam, windows would open and ashtrays would fly off dressers. Then there were times when the ghost would actually walk into the room."

Seeing this ghost for the first time was likely a terrifying experience for Campbell. However, she claimed that she eventually got used to the paranormal being and would even interact with it while living in the house. She continued, "After a while it felt normal. I'd pass her in the hallway and casually wish her good morning."

By the early 2000s, Neve Campbell had cemented herself as a Hollywood star, but she clearly still thought about her time as a dancer. This led to her coming up with the story for the 2003 film "The Company," which follows a ballerina performing with the distinguished Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. While preparing to play the lead in this movie, Campbell underwent extensive dance training, which unfortunately led to her breaking a rib just days before heading to Chicago.

Speaking with IGN, she said, "I started doing eight and a half hours of training a day for four and a half months, and then got to Chicago to work with the Joffrey [Dance Company] for a month and a half again, eight hours a day, to learn all the ballet. And I actually broke my rib three days before I went to Chicago." Training eight hours a day with a broken rib was likely incredibly painful for Campbell, but she pushed through it so that she'd be ready to film the dance sequences in "The Company," and pay tribute to her dancing roots.

By the late 2000s, Neve Campbell had received acclaim for her roles in "The Company" and several other movies and had played the iconic final girl Sidney Prescott in three "Scream" films. She had experienced an immense amount of success in Hollywood, but decided it was time to leave in 2008. She moved from Los Angeles to London and actually took a three-year break from acting. At this time, many believed that Campbell might be leaving acting behind for good, but she has explained that she just needed to step away for a little while.

During an appearance on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" in 2018, she said, "I needed a minute. In my 20s, it all hit so fast and so big that it was a little overwhelming. I just wasn't interested in the scripts and I was feeling a bit unhappy with the things that were coming to me and I was feeling a little bored of the whole thing and I thought, 'I want a change.'"

Because of the massive success of the "Scream" franchise, Hollywood was constantly trying to typecast Campbell in horror movies in the 2000s. This proves that even actors on Campbell's level sometimes struggle to find meaningful roles. This led to her taking a long hiatus and only accepting roles that she was truly interested in upon her return to Hollywood in 2011.

After her three-year break, Neve Campbell's first movie back was "Scream 4." At this point in time, it had been over ten years since "Scream 3," so fans of the slasher franchise couldn't wait to see Sidney Prescott on the big screen again. Since this is the defining role of her career, "Scream 4" was the perfect comeback movie for Campbell, but unfortunately, the filming process was more difficult than expected after she injured her foot.

In an interview with Vulture, Campbell said, "Physically I had to train for months beforehand, and then right before we shot, I hurt my foot. So I did the film with an injured foot, which was a drag." The "Scream" movies always require a lot of physicality from Campbell, so this injury definitely wasn't ideal, and once again proves that Campbell has been plagued with injuries her entire life. Thankfully, her character is as capable as ever in "Scream 4," and it's hard to tell that Campbell was injured while filming it.

The "Scream" franchise has helped to give Neve Campbell a life that most people couldn't even imagine. Thanks to the success of the movies, she will forever be regarded as an iconic horror star. However, there have also been downsides to playing the main character in the "Scream" movies. Throughout her career, Campbell has consistently received threats from several different stalkers. Therefore, similar to how Sidney Prescott needs to worry about the return of Ghostface in the "Scream" movies, Campbell has had to make sure she is safe from her stalkers in real life.

In 2000, when she was still quite a young actress, Campbell told Entertainment Weekly (via The Mirror), "I have several people who write me letters nonstop, and I've had threats." In this interview, she admitted that she was terrified her first stalker would find her. She continued, "I feel sad for people who make it their motive in life to stalk someone, and they're obviously obsessive and disturbed and don't have a life of their own, but it's also terrifying for us."

If you thought you had heard the last of Neve Campbell's struggles with injuries, think again. In 2018, she starred in the action movie "Skyscraper" alongside Dwayne Johnson. In the movie, Campbell and Johnson's characters, along with their son, must escape the world's tallest building after it catches on fire. As the actress explained on "Good Morning America," many scenes in "Skyscraper" required her to carry Noah Cottrell, the actor who played her fictional son, on her back.

Because of this, Campbell actually had to get spine surgery after she filmed the movie. She stated, "I had spine surgery, I have a cage in my spine now, I'm, like, the bionic woman ... I had to carry Noah, the adorable little boy (in the movie), he's little, but he's, like, 65 pounds. I was a dancer, so my back was already a little compromised, but that was, like, the straw that broke the camel's back."

Based on her comments about the movie, Campbell clearly had a fun time making "Skyscraper." Yet, having to undergo spine surgery after filming the movie was definitely not something she was expecting. On the contrary, after her lifetime of injuries, perhaps nothing surprises Campbell anymore.

In 2022, eleven years after the release of "Scream 4," Neve Campbell once again reprised her role as Sidney Prescott in the fifth movie. This entry sort of rebooted the franchise for modern audiences, and its success led to "Scream VI." However, in June 2022, just a few months after the release of the fifth movie, Campbell released a statement that shockingly announced her departure from the franchise. As reported by People, she said, "Sadly I won't be making the next 'Scream' film. As a woman I have had to work extremely hard in my career to establish my value, especially when it comes to 'Scream.' I felt the offer that was presented to me did not equate to the value I have brought to the franchise."

Clearly, Campbell wanted to star in "Scream VI," but chose to exit the project because of a salary dispute. In an interview with People in August 2022, she stood by her decision to leave the franchise, saying, "As a woman in this business, I think it's really important for us to be valued and to fight to be valued. I honestly don't believe that if I were a man and had done five installments of a huge blockbuster franchise over 25 years, that the number that I was offered would be the number that would be offered to a man."

While she sat out for the sixth movie, she and the franchise producers agreed on a fair wage for the seventh entry. Therefore, Campbell will star in "Scream 7," which hits theaters in February 2026.