Sidney Prescott

Sidney Prescott is a fictional character and the primary protagonist of the Scream series. The character was created by Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven and is portrayed by Canadian actress Neve Campbell. She first appeared in Scream (1996) followed by three sequels: Scream 2 (1997), Scream 3 (2000) and Scream 4 (2011). The character appears in the Scream films as the target of a series of killers who adopt the Ghostface persona, a ghost mask and black cloak, to pursue her. In each film, the Ghostface killers often murder people close to Sidney and taunt her by phone with threats and intimate knowledge of her life or the murder of her mother, leading to a final confrontation where the true killer is revealed.

The killers that target Sidney have varying motivations ranging from revenge in Scream to the fame that will come from killing her in Scream 2, due to the fame she herself has obtained as a survivor of the murder spree in the original film. She first becomes the focus of her boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) and his friend Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), Billy seeking revenge for his mother's abandonment following his father's affair with Sidney's mother Maureen Prescott. Scream 3 later reveals that Billy learned of this affair through Roman Bridger (Scott Foley), Sidney's half-brother, himself seeking revenge for his abandonment and rejection by Maureen, sparking the chain of events that permeate each film.