Neve Campbell Auditioned For Her First Major Role To Chase A Different Career

"Scream" star Neve Campbell is famous for her acting career, and one of her earliest roles she's best known for is Julia Salinger in the series "Party of Five." However, she didn't audition for it to get a six-year series regular role on a major TV show; she auditioned to get a green card. Campbell was a Canadian who came to the United States for more opportunities, but she didn't want to act — she wanted to dance. Things didn't quite work out that way. Instead, she was a major part of the show, as one of the five orphaned Salinger siblings.

"Party of Five" co-creator Amy Lippman told Vulture in a recent retrospective, "Julia was very hard to cast. ... Neve came in, and she seemed like a girl who had made a decision to be independent in a way, and that was intriguing to us. She didn't come in with her mother. She came in on her own."

While Campbell was definitely independent, it could have been because she didn't really care about the show. Campbell explained, "It was my second audition in Los Angeles, and I had come out to L.A. [from Canada] to be a professional dancer." She said that she wanted to do the pilot to get her green card, which would allow her to stay in the States and dance. "I didn't get my green card, I had a visa," she said. "And the show went for six years, which was not what I was expecting! And I didn't get to really dance on the show. That would have been pushing it, I think."

While Neve Campbell initially came to Los Angeles to dance, after "Party of Five" ended up being a success, she continued to act. Campbell had suffered from numerous injuries from dance, and so acting was a safer career path for her. She told First for Women, "It made sense to make the transition when I had the injuries and find another way to tell stories, with a little less pain. It worked for me." And she has had plenty of great film and TV roles to show for it.

In 1996, two years after "Party of Five" started, she was cast in "The Craft" and then got perhaps her most well-known role as Sidney Prescott in "Scream," a franchise that has been going for 30 years and counting. "Scream" was a unique take on a horror movie when it premiered, combining laughs with screams, and made Campbell more famous than ever.

More recently, she's had roles in streaming shows like "The Lincoln Lawyer," "House of Cards," and "Twisted Metal," but she hasn't entirely lost her connection to dance either. She co-developed the story for the movie "The Company," which she also starred in as a dancer at the Joffrey Ballet. That 2003 film has the distinction of being the second-to-last movie to be directed by Robert Altman. And she executive-produced the 2023 documentary "Swan Song," which focuses on a new take on the classic ballet "Swan Lake" put on by Campbell's alma mater, the National Ballet of Canada. She'll next be seen in "Scream 7," which will reunite Campbell with Kevin Williamson and come out in 2026.