play a shy burn victim-turned-witch in the cult classic The Craft. Or maybe you watched, in total awe, as she kissed Denise Richards while portraying a manipulative outcast in Wild Things. And if both of those performances somehow passed you by, there’s no way in hell you didn’t see her star as Sidney Prescott, the ultimate final girl in Wes Craven’s iconic slasher, Scream, and its sequel, Scream 2. Interestingly, all four of those movies came out within a two-year stretch, between 1996 and 1998, solidifying Campbell as one of the decade’s biggest—and most talked-about—stars.

When Canadian-born Campbell was cast as Sidney Prescott, a strong and steady high schooler merely just trying to survive the wrath of a murderous Ghostface killer, she was only 22 years old, and though it was her first starring role, she never could have known that she’d go on to live with the character for over 25 years, reprising her in four sequels. Scream, the fifth film and first iteration since Craven’s death in 2015, premieres Jan. 14. She also had no idea that she was about to be catapulted to a level of fame so high that, within the span of a year, she would break box office records, host Saturday Night Live, and appear on the cover of Rolling Stone.

“That height of fame was not something a 22-year-old really knows how to handle,” she says during a Zoom conversation, conducted in late 2021 from the comfort of her children’s room, where bunk beds sit behind her. (Campbell is mother to sons Caspian, 9, and Raynor, 3, with partner JJ Feild.) “I was lucky that I was working so much that I didn’t get lost. I see a lot of celebrities when they’re at that height fall down the rabbit hole, whether it’s addictions or breakdowns.” Instead of partying, Campbell says during that time she worked 15 or 16 hours a day for ten months a year filming Party of Five, the acclaimed Fox TV series that launched her career, and spent her “time off” appearing in movies.

“This will tell you how tired I was,” she starts. “I was in a car with my manager and my publicist and my manager said, ‘Tell her, tell her,’ to my publicist. And he goes, ‘I’m really excited to tell you: I got you Rolling Stone.’ And I went, ‘What? I’m so tired. I don’t want to do another photo shoot.’ I had no idea what a big deal it was to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.”

Spoiler alert: She did the shoot—obviously—and while the cover line read “Neve Campbell: Red-Hot Party Girl,” the accompanying profile and Campbell’s recollection of her youth are basically the opposite. To clarify, before landing Party of Five, Campbell was born and raised in Guelph, Canada, before training as a ballerina at the National Ballet School of Canada in Toronto. “I was just dancing, dancing, dancing—I was very disciplined and it was kind of insular,” she says. She didn’t pay much attention to pop culture and was definitely not a horror film buff. (The Changeling freaked her out too much.)

But landing Scream changed everything. Campbell was enamored by the hilarious meta script written by Kevin Williamson (who then went on to create the beloved teen drama Dawson’s Creek), and the originality of the scares—a trademark Craven move. In hindsight, it’s no surprise that the 1996 film was a megahit, becoming the highest-grossing slasher film in the world until 2018. All that success, though, meant that Campbell kept getting offers to star in even more scary movies. “I was never going to do another horror movie because I already made the best one,” she says. “Why would I downgrade?”

It’s a fair question. So she ditched Hollywood for a while as a way to recalibrate. Scream 3 was released in 2000 and three years later, Campbell moved to England for seven years, where she dove into the theater community. “I learned a great deal about myself and craft,” she says. “I immersed myself in a different way that is really hard to do in the States.” When she started looking for on-screen roles again, this time, the offers were different and came in the form of prestige TV: She made a memorable guest appearance on Mad Men and landed a recurring role on House of Cards. “I was suddenly out of that young ingenue thing and I was seen more as a grown woman. The rules are more interesting with these roles.”