On your toes, people -- Neve Campbell is coming to town.
And the former dancer is bringing with her The Company, a film about real life in the ballet world that's directed by Robert Altman. The Company is a gala at the film festival, and will be in theatres on Christmas Day.
This film has been a pet project of Campbell's for ages. The Guelph native, known to most as an actress, spent six childhood years at Toronto's internationally renowned National Ballet School of Canada. Dance training gave Campbell her well known ability to work like a fiend.
So make no mistake: That cute kid from Party Of Five is the muscle behind this film, and it took her seven years to get it made. In The Company, Campbell is just one of 40 members of the city of Chicago's Joffrey Ballet. Over the phone from her home in Los Angeles, the actress talks about the process of getting the movie made. She read endless scripts to find the perfect writer, eventually getting Barbara Turner (who is Jennifer Jason Leigh's mother and the screenwriter behind such films as Pollock and Georgia). She talked to dancers at the Joffrey, she developed the story, she pursued director Robert Altman. The former ballerina even broke a rib during pre-production dance training. This is not for sissies.
"I didn't want to make a film about a ballerina in the chorus trying to make it as the lead -- just a movie about the dance world and different aspects of it," Campbell says.
"The Company is almost a documentary. It's a season in the life of a company, and it feels great to tell the story in a way it should be told."
Campbell, who is 29, worked at developing the story and at getting to know the dancers. "I was asking them for their stories and for their willingness."
As for having Altman direct, she says, "I never thought we'd get him. I spent two months flying to New York to convince him that the dance world is fascinating. Basically, we just pestered him," she adds, laughing.
Campbell's ambition was to show the real world of dancers. "Just telling this story was a big part of it for me. Everyone is so fascinated by athletes and by stars, but for the most part, people know nothing about dance -- about the skill, the athleticism of classical ballet. I wanted people to know that you're trained never to show that it takes effort. It's about hiding the pain, hiding the effort. It's about what it takes to look that graceful."
For example: One of the first things she learned at the National Ballet School, Campbell says, was how to breathe sideways. Huh?
"To breathe without pushing your stomach out, so no one can see you breathing," she says. Yikes. But she's grateful to the school. "They make you technically adept and strong. Great strength, great training."
She was accepted, at age nine, to the National Ballet School Of Canada, and remained there until she was 14.
The training and discipline involved last a lifetime.
As a child, Campbell says, she would never have imagined being an actress. "Your entire idea was to join a dance company. That's what I wanted. I suffered a lot of injuries," she says, adding, "some bodies can take injuries, some can't.
"I grew up in theatre, surrounded by it. But I always thought it would be dance."
Campbell made her first stage appearance at the age of five in Aladdin, a production of her father's theatre group. But a year later, after her father took her to a performance of The Nutcracker, Campbell was determined to make ballet her life.
As a dancer, Campbell distinguished herself quickly for her hard work. She was identified as special for her beauty, strength and energy, and eventually danced in Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. But she wasn't entirely happy at ballet school, and left without finishing to move in with her older brother Christian, who is also an actor.
She got acting work in commercials. She got hired on for Phantom Of The Opera when she was 15. Campbell was 10 years younger than anybody else in the dance corps for Phantom. Of that she says, "I felt so blessed. I felt lucky. It was the training."
She's on record about her eventual unhappiness with the world of ballet, though she says that until she was 18 or 19, she defined herself, first and foremost, as a dancer. And that's despite her acting success -- a Canadian series called Catwalk was one of her first acting roles for television. She found fame with Party Of Five and went on to star in such films as the hugely popular Scream trilogy, Wild Things, Drowning Mona, Panic, and Three To Tango, among others.
But dance, Campbell says, "is a major undertaking. If you dance, that's all you can do. It has to be your entire world. That didn't work for me, personally, but what I wanted with The Company is for dancers to be appreciated."
What she didn't expect, Campbell says, laughing, was the sense of relief she feels now that the film is complete. There is real sadness, she says, that comes when you leave the world of dance and have to let go. Campbell praises the Dancer Transition Centre in Toronto, a place where there is help offered to those who must make that change. Doing the film was almost therapeutic for someone like Campbell, who didn't finish her life in dance with any sort of "finale" or closure.
"I really felt a release with this, and that felt really good."
Her next films after The Company will be Blind Horizon with Val Kilmer and a broad English satire called The Churchill Years. Campbell starts laughing just talking about the latter. "It's very Monty Python-esque humour. Christian Slater plays Winston Churchill, as Hollywood feels the real Churchill isn't photogenic enough." Hitler and the Queen also figure into the story.
Then there's When Will I Be Loved, which Campbell says was shot in 12 days with plenty of improv. "That was a great learning experience."
Meanwhile, she says she's very happy to be bringing The Company to Toronto. There is a lot of anticipation for the film, and the positive buzz has already begun.
"The people are so relaxed, so welcoming. I'm so happy to introduce it there," says Campbell.
She adds, cheerfully, "I feel like I'm throwing a wedding."
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