Rumer has it

THE offspring of famous parents often make the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The pressure of coping with a life in the spotlight because of mum and dad can cause them to go off the rails. Others trade on their parents’ success, only to reveal they’ve little to offer.

%movie(31656)Watch the trailer for Sorority Row (18) starring Rumer Willis.

It’s never an easy path, but one that Rumer Willis is negotiating better than most. As the daughter of once-hot Hollywood couple Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, she has an illustrious movie pedigree to live up to.

That she appears to be establishing herself in her own right and not just trading on the family name, must gladden the hearts of her now-divorced parents.

Rumer, who stars in the terrified-teen-girls horror movie Sorority Row, even has opinions.

This is unheard of among young Hollywood, where looks, not thoughts, are considered what counts. This is the very subject on which the 21-year-old actress wants to be vocal.

No one doubts the pressure under which young women in Hollywood such as her are placed – and the media must take some of the blame – to always look fantastic and be in great shape. Of course, she says, she misses being able to walk to the grocery store in her pyjamas as “normal” people can do for fear of being snapped by the paparazzi.

“But what are you gonna do,” she asks. “One of the most important things that I would love to do, if hopefully it all works out and I get to continue doing this, is to set a really positive role model for young women about their body image and about eating.

“In the past few years, this idea of perfection that has come up in Hollywood – there needs to be a shift in that, especially in the younger generations. I have two younger sisters in high school and I hear about it all the time, and I would like to give out a much better body image message.”

That message would be that girls “don’t need to be stick-thin where you can see your bones through your skin,” she says.

“You don’t need that to be beautiful or to fit in. What you are is exactly what you should be. You can’t let other people dictate how you live your life or how you look. That’s not living.

“That’s another reason why I love being an actress. When you stop working you forget you don’t have someone to do your hair every day.

You go on set and you look like crap and an hour later you can look beautiful. I could never spend that much time on all that myself.”

Her argument, in the eyes of some, may be undermined by all the actresses in Sorority Row looking in incredible shape as they are stalked, while in various states of undress, by a killer seeking revenge on those who covered up a murder. “But they’re just normal-looking girls. We didn’t go in and hire a bunch of girls who had no body,” she argues.

It’s her name that makes her stand out from the crowd in Hollywood. Now 21, she played both the daughter of her mum (in Striptease) and dad (in Hostage).

The question of whether a famous surname is a help or a hindrance is one she’s heard before and neither fazes her or causes offence. “I don’t think you can ever look at anything you’ve come into this world with as either good or bad – it’s just what you get and you can’t do anything about it,” she says.

“Everyone has opportunities and different doors that are open to them in different ways to whatever they want to do. The thing in the end is, if you’re talented you’ll get work, and if you’re not, then you won’t.

“It doesn’t really matter who you know in the end. You could go and get an audition, but if you go in there and you suck they’re not going to give you the job.”

She never really considered any other careers seriously. “For a while when I was a kid I kind of wanted to be a doctor, but I don’t know why. It sounds like so much work. But I figure one day I could play a doctor in something and get that out of the way,” she says.

Her parents have never stood in her way.

“They’ve always been entirely supportive and extremely great in that way. I couldn’t ask for anything better,” she says.

For her, the attraction of Sorority Row wasn’t just the ingeniously gory death scenes dreamed up for the girls, but the way they talked to each other in a female-driven cast.

That made it different from most other teen horror movies.

“Most of the time in those all you see is a couple making love in the corner, then you see the killer outside the window, then the girl ends up dying two minutes later. I was excited by the female-empowerment aspect to it.”

RUMER’S character is the screamer, spending much of the movie screaming her head off and crying. But no, she didn’t worry about not looking pretty on screen.

“God no, I would never want the responsibility of being the prettiest girl in the room,”

she says, sitting cross-legged on her seat in a plush London hotel during promotional duties for the film.

“That would be too much. But after I did House Bunny I don’t think I could look any worse. I mean, I was in a metal back brace. So after that the snot and the tears were kind of easy in Sorority Row.”

Her vocal training came in handy for all the screaming, although she surprised even herself.

“I don’t know where the screams came from. I had no idea I could scream that loud,”

she laughs.

“The sound guys weren’t so happy with me.

You definitely lose your voice afterwards, but I like screaming, it’s fun.”

What she enjoys most about acting is “being able to connect with people,” she says. “I hope people aren’t going through similar events to those in Sorority Row, but if you can connect with someone and they don’t feel alone because they saw something you were in, that’s fine.

“Obviously Hollywood is still run by men and to be able to be in a film that is full of strong, empowered females is amazing.”

■ Sorority Row (18) opens in cinemas on Wednesday.