Neve Campbell Is Even More Fascinating In Real Life Than Any Of The Characters She Plays

Before she made a living running from Ghostface, Campbell once had to run away from something much scarier: a wild animal high on Coke (-a Cola, that is).

Campbell shared the harrowing tale on The Kelly Clarkson Show, where she detailed being 17 years old on a film set in Canada, and shooting a scene where she was meant to run from a bear. In a somewhat shocking lack of precaution, not only did the filmmakers have a real bear on set for teenage Campbell to interact with, but they also gave her, in her words, “a big bottle of Coke to feed it. So now this is like a bear on a sugar rush.”

They then told her to dip her hand in a pot of honey and run to a nearby tree to bait the bear into chasing her. She was supposed to touch the tree, turn around, and reach out her hand so the bear would, in theory, stop running and start licking the honey off. That’s where it all went wrong.

Described Campbell, “He grabs me by the leg, and he pulls me through the forest. My mother happens to be visiting set, so she’s screaming. The whole crew is frozen because no one can believe what’s happening. All I can think to say is, ‘He’s biting me!,’ like it’s not obvious.”

Luckily the bear’s handler was able to draw the animal away by throwing rocks at it, and Campbell miraculously escaped with no major injuries. On that same set, however, she also got bit by a wolf and thrown from a horse.

Scream spoiler alert: Turns out Sidney dated both killers in the franchise's first movie. Campbell’s character, of course, had a relationship with Skeet Ulrich’s Billy in the film, but off-screen, Campbell actually dated Matthew Lillard, AKA Billy's accomplice, Stu.

Though they were only together for a short period of time after the movie was released, it seems that even after all these years, Lillard still holds her in high regard: In 2022, he tweeted a passionate defense of her decision to leave the Scream franchise due to a pay dispute.

Wrote Lillard:

Why is a woman supposed to take less? Why wouldn't you pay her more as the series goes on?... Should Neve Campbell be paid for the work she's done in five movies of a franchise? Yes, because she's a female lead of one of the most successful horror franchises.

Perhaps in a different universe, horror fans would know Campbell not as a scream queen, but a dancing one. At just 6 years old, the actress set her sights on becoming a ballerina and even trained at the National Ballet School of Canada as a teenager, making her debut in productions of The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty.

Unfortunately, this took a toll on her body. Describing the injuries she sustained during her dancing career to the Washington Post, Campbell elaborated:

I've had bunions. I've had broken toes. I've had fallen arches. I've had strained tendons in my arches. I've had tendonitis in my Achilles'. I've had torn ligaments and sprained ankles in both ankles. Shin splints. Pulled calves. In my knees, I've had chondromalacia and tendonitis. I've had hamstrings pulled. I've had snapping-hip syndrome and arthritis in my hips. I've had sciatic problems in my back and the arthritis in my neck. Oh, and I sprained my wrists.

As a result, she ended up opting for the much less rigorous job of acting. Still, she continues to appreciate the dance world. "It was my life, my love, and my introduction to the arts," she said. “[But] I had dealt with a lot of injuries, and I knew that if I continued to try to have a career in a company, I would always be struggling with that.”

Aside from dancing, pre-Scream Campbell also took a crack at theater acting. Her professional theatrical debut was in a Toronto production of The Phantom of the Opera, and in 2005, she was set to appear in an off-Broadway revival of Michael Weller’s Loose Ends, a romantic drama set in the ‘70s.

Adjacent to live theater, this was also the same year she starred in Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical alongside other big theater names, like Kristen Bell and Alan Cumming. Needless to say, she’s something of a triple threat.

Even though everyone has struggles, discussing them is often difficult. Campbell, though, has been pretty candid about her past mental health difficulties. She even once opened up about having a nervous breakdown at just 14 years old.

Said the actress in an interview, "I found that I'd lost my passion for dance. Emotionally I couldn't handle things anymore." The result? She ended her dance career at the age of 15. That wasn't the only time she suffered from acute stress, either. She revealed that, at 23, she lost a great amount of hair due to a stressful divorce and being over-worked.

Fortunately, however, she has also shared how much her stress levels have improved: "I think I have the faculties to be able to handle things now.” Further proof of her healing is how much she still seems to love and appreciate dance. She even revisited it as an adult while training for a film about the Joffrey Ballet.

Campbell was a bona-fide star of the late ‘90s and early 2000s, but eventually the spotlight grew just a bit too hot. She has detailed the many drawbacks of her fame, saying, “I’ve had experience with stalkers. I have several people who write me letters nonstop, and I’ve had threats… I feel like I never made the choice to be famous.”

Even the fans could sometimes be a bit much. She once told a story of someone knocking on the stall door while she was in a public restroom, reaching under it to pass her a pen and paper and asking for an autograph. "Can I finish peeing first?" she replied.

Eventually, she decided to take a hiatus from Hollywood, moving to London for a number of years for her own security, privacy, and mental health. She later said of the decision, “I needed a minute… In my 20s it all hit so fast and so big that it was a little overwhelming.”