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Rose McGowan opens up about “lonely” time as a homeless teenager: ‘I was entirely focused on just surviving’

‘I have shut the door on working in Hollywood’

Katie O'Malley
Monday 22 July 2019 12:28 BST
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Rose McGowan attends the Vivienne Westwood show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Fall/Winter 2018/2019 on March 3, 2018 in Paris, France.
Rose McGowan attends the Vivienne Westwood show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Fall/Winter 2018/2019 on March 3, 2018 in Paris, France.

Rose McGowan has opened up about being homeless as a teenager, describing it as a “lonely” time.

The Scream actor has previously spoken about becoming homeless after emancipating herself from her parents aged 15.

While she said she made the decision so she could have “control” over her life, the actor admitted she soon learnt the realities of being on her own.

In a new interview with The Big Issue, the actor said: “I was homeless, I was on my own, and I was very lonely.

“I was entirely focused on just surviving. So when I started having relationships with men I wasn’t set up to understand that kind of world. A lot of older men were attracted to me, which at the time I thought was cool but now I think it’s creepy.

“I developed an eating disorder as a way of responding to the world being scary.”

The actor was one of the first of dozens of women to accuse disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct in 2017.

McGowan says the 67-year-old of raping her by performing oral sex in a hotel at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997, when she was 23. Weinstein’s spokesperson has said "any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied".

In the years that have followed, the 45-year-old has regularly spoken about the importance of speaking out against sexual harassment, assault, and on sexism in Hollywood.

Reflecting on her time working as an actor, McGowan said she would tell her younger self to not go into Hollywood, describing it as a “sick, toxic system that needed to be blown apart”.

“If I could give the younger me advice I’d say don’t go into Hollywood…But now I don’t care what they say and I don’t care what they think,” she told the publication.

She continued, stating: “I have shut the door on working in Hollywood. And they have shut the door on me. And that’s OK because I’m an artist and when I was working in Hollywood I really felt that I was a commodity which wasn’t worth much.”

Last year, the actor released her memoir, Brave, which explored her childhood as part of the controversial group Children of God – a cult started in the late 1960s – and her alleged sexual assault by Weinstein.

Discussing the book, McGowan said that she believes society is improving when it comes to speaking out against injustices.

“I think it’s clear that things have moved forwards since my book Brave,” she said.

“And it’s across all industries, not just Hollywood. My goal was a lot bigger than Hollywood. I called my book Brave to show people how to be brave in their own lives and how to fight the machine. Because when you do fight the machine it fights back and you have to be prepared for that.”

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Earlier this month, McGowan expressed solidarity with several actors whose careers she claims were “stolen”, as a result of their involvement with Weinstein.

“We all got stolen,” the star told The Guardian. “And we were all very good at our jobs. That’s the other crime in all this.”

Actors including Rosanna Arquette, Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino were among the names to allege in 2017 that they had experienced professional retribution for resisting Weinstein’s attacks in the 1990s.

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