Daily Bruin Senior Staff

It's a hazy L.A. Saturday and Rose McGowan is kneading a blueberry muffin into a countertop.

The actress is illustrating how to properly enunciate "you fucking chunky pumpkinhead."

"You fuckingchunkypumpkinhead," she blurts out, sailing through the last five syllables.

"It's just extra hard work to say `You fucking chunky pumpkinhead' and make it sound natural," she says. "I had to roll those things around a few times."

In case you're wondering, Rose McGowan's the star of Gregg Araki's newest film, appropriately titled "Doom Generation." She plays a teen speed queen named Amy who conjugates the F-word infinitely and trades sex partners for a sick road trip through pop culture hell. Now, in a Hollywood donut shop, she's the polar opposite of Amy as she talks to The Bruin about her life, Hollywood and why she's practiced at delivering lines like "you fucking chunky pumpkinhead."

"(Gregg Araki's) probably the only person I've ever seen who puts his exact script on the screen," she says. "If the sentence stopped in the middle and some other character picks it up you seriously couldn't say another word. You'd have to do the whole scene again."

Araki, in a separate interview, acknowledges his insistence on exact dialogue. "When I write the script I know where Amy smokes a cigarette," he says. "I don't know if it's a control issue or not; I'd have to get into therapy to figure it out."

But if his ban on ad-libbing made her work harder, McGowan must be thankful for his equally precise method of casting.

"When I write my movies, I have a very specific visual idea in my head," he says. "I'm really picky with my casting, and I'm not going to be satisfied with any old aspiring young actress. I knew pretty much what Amy looked like and what she sounded like, and we went through literally dozens and dozens of actresses."

After months of searching, Araki was about to give up on the project when mutual friends introduced him to McGowan. "I was just visiting this friend, and of all cheesy places, we were at a gym in L.A.," she laughs, because it's the second time she's been cast out of the blue.

The first time led to a small string of films including "Encino Man" and the yet-to-be-released "Biodome." After each project, she'd move back to Seattle for art school before getting sucked in again. Now she's 20 and she's trying to decide if she really wants to act.

"I keep getting cast in things," she says, "but I still haven't decided what I want to do."

"Ideally, I'd like to become a curator of a museum and I feel off my path. But on the other hand, I've been cast twice walking down the street, so maybe this is supposed to happen."

At least her career questions have allowed her to choose a wide-range of projects. When you're not sure if you even want to act it's hard for Hollywood to pigeonhole or position you. "I'm trying really hard to not play anyone who says `oh my god,' or `like' which is a lot of what's out there," says McGowan. "The `Clueless' sort of roles."

After "Doom" she starred in Araki's "Nowhere," and next she's a green-haired hooker in a Robert Zemekis short. "The game is not to be yourself," she says. "Winona Ryder and people like that, I think they're fine, but they tend to play themself over and over."

Despite frequent comments that she looks like Ryder due to their dark hair and fair skin color, McGowan's not willing to go that route. She prefers character acting where she's allowed the freedom to create an altogether different persona. "I get to be myself long enough," she says. "I'd like to take a break, please."

McGowan was granted quite a break with Amy, as the "Doom" shoot was grueling and hectic. "I read it as a story and I thought it was a really cool story. It didn't sink in until I was on the set that I'd actually have to do the things in the script."

"Doom," unrated and nowhere near an R, is packed with severed heads, limbs, bodily fluids and a penis tattooed with Christ. It might not be a film for first dates.

McGowan was treated to all this for a month and a half of night shoots from five in the afternoon to eight in the morning, not interacting with anyone besides the cast and crew. "I kind of snapped a little bit at the end," she says. "It was like taking one too many hits of acid."

What's more, "Doom" gave McGowan her first taste of cinematic sex. "There was one whole week of sex scenes!" she yells, "and for some reason Gregg is a real sick fuck and I swear to God every sex scene was done at six in the morning."

Only now, after watching the completed film, does she realize the depths of Araki's sickness. "When you're so isolated in the role it didn't seem that wrong to do it," she says. "Now when I see some of the things I did I'm shocked."

While America hasn't reacted to the film yet (it opens Friday), "Doom's" shocking rather well in Europe. McGowan just got back from Barcelona where she did a week-long press tour for "Doom," and she was pleasantly surprised by its success overseas.

While "Doom" will be released as an art film in the United States, in Europe the film has broader distribution. "They're opening it on more screens than `Terminator 2,'" she says, smiling. "I'm a huge star in Spain. So if I suck here ..."

Upon hearing that a certain "Baywatch" icon has a similar pattern of popularity, she stops laughing.

"David Hasselhoff?" she says, mulling over the suggestion. "That's a new one."

But after a bit of thought she relents. "That's cool. Beats Winona Ryder."