Music: {allcanada} Campbell victim of Twitter trickster

Saturday, September 4, 2010

{allcanada} Campbell victim of Twitter trickster

LOS ANGELES -- Guelph, Ont., native Neve Campbell's Internet popularity went into the stratosphere this summer, once it was announced she was filming the fourth instalment in her iconic Wes Craven-directed horror movie, Scream.

Well, maybe a little too stratospheric.

Out there in cyberspace with little hope of a return ticket, some trickster opened a fake Twitter account in her name using a photo of Campbell nude from the waist up.

It's the first item that pops up and bites you when you Google the key words "Campbell" and "Twitter" and there's really nothing the 37-year-old actress can do about it.

As many are already well aware, once someone opens a Twitter account -- which is anyone anywhere with access to the Internet -- only the person who created it can close it, no matter if the account is an impersonation or not.

Further, according to the law books, Campbell has no legal leg to stand on in terms of suing over the photo, since the picture is a real shot of her taken from her 2007 movie, I Really Hate My Job and is in the public domain.

Calls to her reps about the matter went unanswered and Campbell has not issued a public statement about it.

But an actor colleague of Campbell's says The Party of Five actress is "pretty upset" the fake Twitter account is so prominent on web searches of her.

"It's an invasion of privacy when someone pretends to be you and it's unsettling that once it's on the web, there's really nothing to do about it," her colleague, who doesn't want his name printed, said.

At least on the Ann Arbor, Mi., set of Scream 4, Campbell was able to engage in some group therapy.

Co-stars Hayden Panettiere and Emma Roberts could've easily gathered in between takes on the horror movie to recount Twitter nightmares of their own.

Panettiere had someone out there pretending to be her, saying she does illegal drugs. And Roberts was forced to shut down her personal account after a deluge of hate tweets from Twilight film fans who didn't like Roberts saying she preferred one character in the vampire movie over an another.

A lot of Canadian star victims of bogus Twitter accounts have made statements about it.

Rachel McAdams denounced a fake Twitterer who made inane posts purportedly from her such as, "Was thinking of going on a weekend break somewhere with my Mom, anyone know of a nice place in Canada?"

McAdams' former boyfriend and Notebook co-star Ryan Gosling also told the media he was the victim of a prankster, and then opened his own account to promote his band, Dead Man's Bones.

But the feistiest denouncement came from Nepean, Ont., actress Sandra Oh, who took matters into her own thumbs when an imposter came online pretending to be the Grey's Anatomy star.

Oh posted this personal message to the fake account:

"I would appreciate for whomever opened this account under my name to close it ASAP."

Amen.