Gaylen Ross

Overview

Born
August 15, 1950 · Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Birth name
Gail Sue Rosenblum
Height
1.63 m

Biography

Family

Parents
Relatives

Trivia

Her fellow Zombie : Le Crépuscule des morts-vivants (1978) co-star, Ken Foree, also hails from Indianapolis, Indiana.
Attended college in both California and at the New School in New York City.

Quotes

[on the filming environment with George Romero] He was a very gentle director, and he didn't speak much, but he would let you know what he would like just with his just attitude, and he would let you improvise as much as you wanted. The bigger picture was definitely always George and the zombies and what he decided was really humane and ethical as opposed to not, and sometimes it was the humans who were not.
[after being asked if she hanged out or interacted with the zombie extras during the production of Dawn of the Dead] The zombies were made up separately, and we didn't have much interaction with them. Most of them were working for a dollar a day, and they were so happy to be zombies, and they would often keep their makeup on - they were engaged completely. But we would shoot at night, and then at six in the morning, the mall would be turned back over to the owners of the mall and the music would come on. And that's when we would wrap. And Pittsburgh was icy and cold, so many people would use the mall to exercise. I remember a time the music came on, and I see this group of people just walking in the mall, and I remember turning to them and saying, 'no, we've wrapped. You can go home now,' thinking that they were zombies. They weren't made up, but the way they were moving through the mall was exactly what George was depicting.
[on the lasting appeal Dawn of the Dead had towards the general public, decades after it was released in theaters] I think it's quite incredible. I just did a Q&A for the 45th anniversary a few weeks ago, and you have children and grandchildren, these generations who respond to this film in a way that you would think that there would be a feeling of a film being dated, or the effects are not as sophisticated. But the way that audiences react to this film, it's pretty amazing. George tapped into something that's not just horror, but something else that made the film last this long, and this popular.
[after being asked if the Dawn of the Dead film crew faced any type of restrictions upon filming the mall department stores] We had complete free range. The guys that were running through Penneys with the guns and the cash - well fake cash, of course - it was just open-door. And then George brought in the motorcycle gang. They were really a motorcycle gang, and they had no idea, or any constraints about making films. I think they ended up having to repave the floor of the mall after the film because the motorcycles just destroyed it. And then there were certain effects that were not supposed to happen, like too many explosives when the door breaks. But nobody got killed.
[on her and George Romero's approach towards her character Francine Parker in the film Dawn of the Dead] I actually took the role before I knew who George was, and after he cast, he did a screening of 'Night of the Living Dead.' I was like, 'this is going to be interesting.' I did remember saying, 'what are we going to do about this woman character? I'm not going to scream and cry, and if that's how we're doing this, then I don't feel comfortable doing it.' So it was an interesting dialogue that George and I had at the beginning about how are we going to make Fran not a victim, and part of the characters that were active? And it evolved... he rewrote it while we were working, because he also felt we needed to empower her more.