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Neve was born in Guelph, Ontario. Her father, Gerry Campbell, is
an immigrant from Glasgow, Scotland, and works as a high school
drama teacher at Erindale Secondary School in Mississauga,
Ontario. Her mother, Marnie Neve, is a psychiatrist of Sephardic
Jewish descent from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Campbell's
maternal grandparents ran a theatre company in the Netherlands
and her paternal grandparents were also performers. Neve
Campbell's name, "Neve", is a Sephardic Jewish surname and means
"snow" in Italian and "oasis" in Hebrew and Arabic. Neve was
raised a Catholic.
Neve's parents divorced shortly after her birth, and she was
raised mostly by her father. She began her public life as a
dancer, joining the National Ballet School of Canada at the age
of 9, training there and participating in performances of The
Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty. Following several injuries, Neve
moved from dancing into acting at the age of 15, performing The
Phantom of the Opera at the Pantages Theatre in Toronto. Neve
Campbell's first starring role was on the short-lived Canadian
television series Catwalk.
Neve rose to wider fame after being cast as the lead character,
Julia Salinger, in the teen drama series Party of Five; she
played this character from 1994 to 2000. Campbell's first widely
released film was 1996's The Craft. Neve Campbell subsequently
appeared in the enormously successful Scream horror film
trilogy, as well as Wild Things, Blues Brothers 2000, and Three
to Tango. She was on People's "50 Most Beautiful People" list in
1998.
Following the end of the Scream series, Neve's career became
more low-key, and she appeared in several films that received a
limited theatrical release, but were well reviewed by critics,
including the 2000 film, Panic, in which she starred alongside
William H. Macy and Donald Sutherland, and the 2003 film, The
Company, about Chicago's Joffrey Ballet. Campbell co-wrote,
produced, and starred in the film. Despite pre-release publicity
suggesting otherwise, Campbell did not break her tradition of
having a "no-nudity" clause in her contract for the film. She
did break the clause for When Will I Be Loved, released in 2004,
a film which was praised by critic Roger Ebert, but which
received only a brief and limited theatrical release.
In March 2006, Neve made her West End theatre debut, in a
version of Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues at the Old Vic
theatre. The play, which received mixed reviews, co-stars
Matthew Modine and Maximilian Schell, and is directed by Robert
Altman, with whom Campbell has previously worked with in The
Company.
Neve married Canadian actor Jeffrey Colt in 1995; they divorced
in 1998. Neve Campbell has also dated actors John Cusack,
Matthew Lillard, and Pat Mastroianni.
Campbell appears in campaign literature and videos for the
Tourette Syndrome Foundation of Canada and the Tourette Syndrome
Association, (a similar organization in the United States). Neve
Campbell's younger half-brother, Damian McDonald, has Tourette
syndrome. Neve Campbell also has an elder brother, Christian
Campbell, and another brother, Alex, both of whom are actors.
In 2005, Neve began dating John Light, an English actor who she
met while filming the movie Investigating S--. The couple became
engaged in December 2005 and live in London, England. When Light
proposed, he got down on one knee and recited Shakespeare to
Campbell.
This Neve Campbell Biography Page is Copyright The Planets © 2004 - 2006 Chuck Ayoub