Why Rose McGowan retreated from Hollywood

CEBU, Philippines -  For some, appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone is a career pinnacle, a childhood fantasy attained. For Rose McGowan, a suggestive pose on a 2007 issue of the iconic magazine was a wakeup call.

“I just had this bouffant hairdo, this big bubble hairdo, this weird Photoshopped forehead that they gave me — I don’t know why exactly, because my forehead was fine, last I checked — and this dark fake tan, and I’m chest-to-chest with Rosario Dawson and an ammo belt around my hip was the only clothing I had on,” McGowan remembered in a conversation with TheWrap on Monday.  “And I was like, Who is that?”

The trouble wasn’t so much just that those specific photographers and designers at that specific magazine had put them in a less-than-comfortable pose (to promote “Grindhouse”), but that the cover represented everything that she had come to hate about her career and industry.

     “It’s always part and parcel of it, you’re expected as a woman, this is what you trade off of, this is how you sell tickets to the movies, this is your part of it,” she rattled off, regretting the state of the business. “Your job as a promoter is this: They’re not sticking a guy on the cover doing it, unless it’s like Seth Rogen doing a joke. So as a woman I’m expected to sell myself, my body, my image, my sexuality, in order to get your ticket sales up. And it’s like, wait, I wasn’t aware that when I signed on to act, I had to sell myself that much.”

And so McGowan retreated from Hollywood, more or less, taking time to travel and study and appearing in fewer projects (most notably an arc in “Nip/Tuck” and a supporting role in “Conan the Barbarian” in 2009). During this time, she says, she found both her true self and her true passion, which together led to her directorial debut on the short film “Dawn.”

A 1961-set story about a teenage girl lured into danger by older kids with bright smiles and dark intentions, “Dawn” is a lush, impressive debut, and one that McGowan says will launch the next phase of her career.