A rising ingénue with raw talent and bursting sexuality, Rose McGowan won praise for her breakthrough role as the speed demon in Gregg Araki's "The Doom Generation" (1995) and had a commercial hit playing the blonde teen bombshell Tatum in "Scream" (1996). Smart, hip and attractive, McGowan has a background just begging for talk show exploitation. Born in Florence, Italy, where her father headed the local Children of God cult (the same one in which River and Joaquin Phoenix were raised), she is the oldest daughter and second born of six. McGowan began modeling in Italian magazines as a child but her world was turned upside down when her father ran off with her nanny. McGowan's mother brought the brood to the USA where they were often on public assistance and McGowan did not always mesh with her mother's men friends. In a 1997 article in, she claimed that when she was 14 years old, her mother's then-current beau—a 28-year old surfer dude—convinced her mother that McGowan was on drugs. She was locked up in a drug rehab clinic, although she has insisted she never had a problem. Released, McGowan tried living with her father in Montreal, Canada, modeled a bit, then hit the scene in the Pacific Northwest, even attending art school in Seattle for a short period.