There's a Rumer going around . .

Published on Friday 11 September 2009 10:57

GOING into the family business can be a blessing and a curse, but when mum and dad are two of the very biggest names in Hollywood, there really is no escaping the inevitable comparisons that will follow.

Rumer Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, is bound to get plenty of media exposure for her role in the spoof horror remake Sorority Row. However, the 21-year-old is determined to step out of her parents' shadow.

"I think when people meet me they're shocked, because the idea of celebrity children is that they're trust-fund babies that don't have any desire to work and they're just going to ride their parents' train," says the fledgling star.

"I would hope that after people meet me, they'd give me the benefit of the doubt. They're kind of like, 'Wow, you're much more chilled and down-to-earth than I thought you'd be."

Born in Kentucky, where her father was completing the film In Country, it was a no-brainer that she'd get the acting bug.

"My earliest memories were from movie sets," she says. "I got to see my parents doing that work every day and I couldn't think of a more fun job to have, a more fun career."

The experience she gained from being on film sets was invaluable, but she also learned that she'd have to work hard to get to the same level as her parents.

"I don't think I realised until I started working myself what it was I'd been privileged to see, growing up," she says. "I saw two actors in a place that I'd want to be, someday, at the top of their profession.

"When I started acting, I had to realise that they were at a different level than me, and that the roles would be smaller, that I would have to work my way towards what they have."

Her film debut came in 1995's Now and Then, a film her mother starred in and produced. The following year, she appeared alongside her mum again in the film Striptease. Taking time out to concentrate on her school-work, she didn't return to the big screen until Hostage in 2005, this time alongside dad before making her adult breakthrough in last year's The House Bunny.

Now comes Sorority Row, a remake of the 1983 slasher flick The House on Sorority Row. In it, Willis and her fellow glam college girls are terrorised by a mysterious killer after a prank on a sorority sister goes fatally wrong.

"Girls kick ass and you rarely see that in see a horror film, especially where it's the girls taking charge," smiles Willis. "It's not just the men going, 'All right, you stay here, I'll be back with an axe and I'll take care of it'."

Although she craves the thumbs up from her parents – "that's what any kid kind of hopes for" – it's her little sister's opinion on the film that matters most "because that's basically the demographic we're aiming for," she says.

"My littlest sister, Tallulah, she's the most opinionated of the whole bunch – if she doesn't like it, she'll be like 'Ru, it was just terrible'."

Sorority Row opens in UK cinemas today. See review pages 10-11