Neve Campbell says her dancing training helped her “stay sane” in Hollywood

Washington [US], September 10 (ANI): Canadian actor Neve Campbell is thankful for the life skills she received as a professional dancer before pursuing a career in Hollywood, reported People.

The Canadian actress, best known for her role as horror heroine Sidney Prescott in five ‘Scream’ films, has dancing roots, having trained at Canada’s famous National Ballet School from the age of nine to fourteen.

As per People, she’s now in Toronto for the city’s International Film Festival to debut the new documentary ‘Swan Song’, which takes audiences inside the National Ballet of Canada’s 2022 production of Swan Lake. Campbell served as an executive producer on the project.

“I have very few pictures of myself at the National Ballet School, but JJ [Feild], my partner, said, ‘Oh, there’s that one photo of you, and you look so determined,'” Campbell, 49, told People while looking back on her early dance days ahead of the festival from her Los Angeles home.

“All of the discipline that I have, I take from dance,” she continued. “The capacity to be able to listen and take direction, with humility, and an understanding that you’re never going to be perfect, and that it takes work and drive to be good, and that no matter how hard you work, you’ll never completely get there — that is the journey.”

“That’s what I learned, and I’ve taken that into the acting world,” added Campbell. “I think it certainly has fed me and it’s helped me stay sane in a very challenging world.”

Campbell said she grew obsessed with dance after her father took her to watch The Nutcracker performed by the National Ballet of Canada.

“I was 6 years old. It was my Christmas present,” she recalled, smiling. “I said, ‘I want to do that.’ “

At 9 she auditioned for the National Ballet School and got in. Campbell described her training there as “hard in many, many ways.”

“It’s hard for anyone,” she added. “The technique that comes out of the dancers there, and the love for the world and for dance that comes out of there is pretty phenomenal.”

Campbell made the difficult decision to drop out of training at 14 despite having “loved the school,” she said.

“I had just been having some mental challenges, just difficult to find the balance between wanting a childhood and following this dream,” she explained. “I had had already quite a bit of injury. From 9 years old, at the National Ballet School, I was in physiotherapy weekly.”

Only a year later, Campbell landed a role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera in Toronto. “Suddenly I was dancing professionally,” she recalls of the early experience. “I was doing what I love to do. I was making friends. I was earning a living already at 15.”

According to People, an agent happened to be in the audience one night, and “the rest is history,” as Campbell described it. All these years later, Campbell says she can’t believe she’s experiencing a “full-circle” moment of bringing a dance documentary to audiences after all of her success in Hollywood. (Most recently, her Netflix series The Lincoln Lawyer was renewed for a third season.)

She can’t believe she got to work with iconic Canadian ballet dancer Karen Kain, one of the primary stars of ‘Swan Song’, which follows the ballet company as it builds a new production of Swan Lake directed by Kain on the eve of her retirement.

“She’s one of the big reasons I became an artist,” said Campbell. “She was the prima ballerina of Canada, one of the world. The ultimate goal was to get to where Karen was. I still remember watching her do Swan Lake when I was, I think, 9 years old. She was pure grace.”

“It was one of those moments in my life where I went, ‘Oh, this is what art can do,’ ” she said. “So getting to create this project with this team and acknowledge the work that she’s done and watch her teach other dancers, pass the torch, basically, it was a really beautiful experience.”

‘Swan Song’ will be released theatrically in Canada on September 22. In Canada, it will later air as a four-part limited series on CBC Gem and CBC TV, premiering November 22, reported People.