Neve Campbell

Neve Campbell is a Canadian actor whose career spans ballet, television drama, horror films, and comedy. Born in Guelph, Ontario, in 1973, she trained at Canada’s National Ballet School before turning to acting. That dance background later became central to one of her most personal film projects.

Campbell first reached a broad television audience as Julia Salinger in *Party of Five*, which ran from 1994 to 2000. The series follows five siblings trying to raise one another after their parents die in a car accident. Julia’s storylines gave Campbell a prominent role throughout the show’s six-season run, alongside Matthew Fox, Scott Wolf, Lacey Chabert, and Jeremy London.

In 1996, Campbell starred as Sidney Prescott in Wes Craven’s *Scream*. Its plot begins with a masked killer targeting teenagers in the fictional town of Woodsboro, California. Sidney became the series’ central character, confronting killers whose motives repeatedly connect to her family and to earlier attacks. Campbell returned for *Scream 2*, *Scream 3*, *Scream 4*, and the 2022 film titled *Scream*. She did not appear in *Scream VI*; she said the offer to return did not reflect the value she brought to the franchise.

The year *Scream* premiered, Campbell also played Bonnie Harper in *The Craft*, a film about four teenage girls who practice witchcraft. Her late-1990s films included *Wild Things*, in which she played Suzie Toller opposite Denise Richards and Matt Dillon. Those roles were markedly different from Sidney Prescott, even as *Scream* remained her most recognizable screen work.

Campbell drew directly on her dance experience for *The Company*, Robert Altman’s 2003 film set in the world of the Joffrey Ballet. She starred, co-wrote the story, and served as a producer. Rather than building the film around a conventional backstage rivalry, Altman used rehearsals, performances, and the dancers’ working lives to show the demands of a professional company.

Later television work brought Campbell to *House of Cards* as political strategist LeAnn Harvey. In Netflix’s *The Lincoln Lawyer*, she plays Maggie McPherson, a prosecutor and the former wife of defense attorney Mickey Haller. She also appeared opposite Dwayne Johnson in the 2018 action film *Skyscraper*.

In 2024, Campbell announced that she would return as Sidney for a seventh *Scream* film. Her association with the character has lasted across decades of sequels, while projects such as *Party of Five* and *The Company* show the range of work she pursued outside the franchise.