Surviving serial killers, dinosaurs and zombies is part of the job description for a Scream Queen. As horror movie vamp Crystal Lowe confesses she’ll take being in league with Jamie Lee Curtis; she adds it’s not the only role she wants.
“I just hope if that’s the title I’m given, the Canadian Scream Queen, that I can use that title to branch out and try everything because Jamie Lee Curtis, with her career, she’s very smart,” she said. “She’s a really good actor and hopefully I can fall into that category.”
Lowe has been sharpening her acting skills for 15 years, starring in the films like Insomnia, Final Destination 3 and her upcoming feature A Little Bit Zombie.
It was while on set for Insomnia, where she had her biggest thrill: being invited to an intimate birthday dinner for Al Pacino.
“I had no lines in that movie — I was the dead girl in flashback scenes,” she recalled. “I asked to take a picture with him and he said, ‘Well honey, don’t you want to take your makeup off?’
Pacino waited an hour and a half so Lowe could clean up. Unfortunately he had to leave before snapping a photo. But she was not left wanting.
“I ended up going to Al Pacino’s birthday dinner the following night and calling my mom, telling her I was going … and she didn’t believe me,” she said. “I sat there with him, Hilary Swank, her mother — who was hilarious — and Christopher Nolan.”
Now she’s come full circle, admitting she was once dubbed Canada’s Hottest Bartender in UMM a decade ago. Now, she’s on the television series Primeval: New World in the role of Toby Nance and owns a restaurant in Vancouver called Hyde.
“Our slogan is you come in Jekyll and you’ll leave Hyde,” she said.
Not one to sit still — which is instinctive when fleeing the undead — her next ventures will be in furniture refurbishment and staking down claim as a film producer.
“I have to be creative in other ways,” she said. “I would love to open an old antique furniture shop.
Though it’s film development that gets her adrenaline pumping.
“I love the idea of producing because to me, it’s like you and I could be sitting in a coffee shop and you’d say, ‘Hey you know what would be a cool movie?’ … and then five years later it’s on the screen.”
As for the denizens of the dark she faces on a daily basis, she’s candid, saying she’d rather tame them than kill them.
“I believe as a person and as an actor if I was going to meet any mythological creature I could convince it to be my pet,” she said, with a mischievous laugh.