The film Clueless made Alicia Silverstone one of Hollywood's hottest actresses for a brief moment in 1995. Silverstone had already made a small splash in 1993, frolicking with Liv Tyler as a sexy teen truant in the music video for the Aerosmith song "Crazy." Two years later she played Cher, the frothy social butterfly in Clueless, a romantic comedy loosely based on Jane Austen's book Emma. Clueless was a smash and Silverstone quickly signed a multi-million dollar studio deal and set up her own production company, but she never quite found another role that suited her so well. She appeared as Batgirl in Batman and Robin (1997, with George Clooney as Batman), as another sexy truant in Excess Baggage (1997, with Benicio Del Toro) and as the love interest in the comedy Blast From the Past (1999, with Christopher Walken), then had lesser roles in films like Beauty Shop (2005, with Queen Latifah) and Stormbreaker (2006). On television she starred as a lovelorn matchmaker in the 2003 series Miss Match.
Silverstone dropped out of Hollywood High, but later got her GED... The role of Batgirl was played by Yvonne Craig in the 1960's Batman TV series... A TV series based on Clueless ran from 1996-99, with actress Rachel Blanchard in the role of Cher.
Career Highlights: Clueless, Blast from the Past, The Crush
First Major Screen Credit: The Crush (1993)
Biography
Hailed as the teen queen of the mid-'90s, Alicia Silverstone rapidly ascended the summit of idolism with the help of an infamous Aerosmith video and starring roles in the cult trash favorite The Crush, and Amy Heckerling's sleeper hit Clueless. Despite such a promising beginning to her career, however, the vivacious, green-eyed blonde subsequently weathered a series of professional set-backs, due to poor film choices, weight issues, and an industry increasingly congested with such similarly ebullient young starlets as Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jennifer Love Hewitt. By the end of the decade, Silverstone's future looked uncertain, although many observers noted that her youth and talent made her chances for a comeback entirely plausible.
Born to English parents in San Francisco on October 4, 1976, Silverstone is the daughter of a real-estate agent and an airline stewardess. She began working as a child model at the age of six after her father sent several pictures of her in a bathing suit to a few agencies. Modeling work led to TV commercials, which in turn led to work on a number of TV series including an episode of The Wonder Years which cast her as Fred Savage's literal dream girl. At the age of 15, Silverstone landed her first starring role in The Crush (1993), a Fatal Attraction for the Noxema set in which she portrayed a young woman obsessed with an older man (Cary Elwes). Although the film was trashed by critics, it was a hit among its teenage target audience, and Silverstone -- who had become legally emancipated from her parents while making the film in order to work longer hours -- was feted at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards with trophies for Best Villain and Breakthrough Performance. Around the same time, she starred in the popular music video for Aerosmith's "Crazy." Her onscreen antics with Liv Tyler, daughter of Aerosmith frontman Steven, coupled with her vampish turn in The Crush virtually ensured Silverstone's status as Hollywood's latest embodiment of nubile, underage female sexuality.
Silverstone's real break came with her starring role as the spoiled, meddlesome, but ultimately endearing Cher Horowitz in Amy Heckerling's Clueless (1995). A very loose and modern adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma, the film was a huge sleeper hit, and Silverstone was roundly praised for her effervescent performance. In the wake of the film's success, the actress signed a ten-million-dollar deal with Columbia that included a three-year first-look deal for her own company, First Kiss Productions. She also won the coveted role of Batgirl in Batman & Robin, something that allowed her to contemplate breaking out of the teen sexpot mode.
Unfortunately, the actress was subsequently besieged with a number of problems, ranging from unending industry criticism of her weight to her first excursion as a producer, Excess Baggage (1997). The film, which also served as a starring vehicle for Silverstone, was a thoroughly misguided kidnapping comedy that failed to win favor with either audiences or critics. To add insult to injury, Silverstone's other major 1997 project, the long-awaited Batman & Robin, was one of the year's most expensive critical and commercial flops.
After a nearly two-year absence from the screen, Silverstone resurfaced in 1999 with Blast from the Past. A likable romantic comedy that cast her as a cynical Valley girl opposite Brendan Fraser, the film enjoyed modest success. Silverstone followed it with a starring role as the French princess in Kenneth Branagh's much-anticipated musical adaptation of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost (2000), which saw the actress interpreting the Bard and Irving Berlin alongside the likes of Branagh, Nathan Lane, Matthew Lillard, and Alessandro Nivola.
In 2001, Silverstone played an American rocker in England for the straight-to-video Rock My World (aka Global Heresay), which, despite providing little more than a blip on her resumé, gave her the opportunity to work with the iconic Peter O'Toole. After serving as executive producer for the animated television series Braceface, Silverstone went on to star in NBC's 2003 sketch comedy Miss Match, which featured the young actress as a divorced lawyer cum matchmaker whose good intentions were not necessarily met with equally positive results. In the same year, she starred opposite Rachael Leigh Cook in Scorched; this time playing a disgruntled bank teller. Silverstone played a role in Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed alongside fellow twentysomethings Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. in the summer of 2004. A subsequent trip to the salon in Beautyshop found Silverstone continuing to keep audiences in stitches, and in 2006 she would join Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy, Missi Pyle, and Alex Pettyfer in bringing author Anthony Horowitz's adolescent daredevil to the screen in the family-oriented action adventure Stormbreaker. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Silverstone was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Deirdre "Didi" (née Radford), a Scottish-born former Pan Amflight attendant, and Monty Silverstone, an English-born real-estateinvestor and part-time actor[1].[1][2] Silverstone was raised in a "traditional Jewish household"; her father, a native of east London, is Jewish, and her mother converted toConservative Judaism before marriage.[3] Silverstone is the youngest of three children and also has a half-sister, London-based rock singer Kezi Silverstone, and a half-brother, David Silverstone, both from her father's previous marriage. Silverstone attended Crocker Middle School, then San Mateo High School but did not complete her high school studies. When she was six-years-old, she began modeling and was subsequently cast in television commercials, the first being for Domino's Pizza. She acquired some early modeling and advertising work and was eventually cast as "dream girl" Jessica on the episode Road Test of The Wonder Years.
Silverstone won a leading part in the 1993 film The Crush, playing a teenaged girl who sets out to ruin an older man after he spurns her affections; she won two awards at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards for the role—Best Breakthrough Performance and Best Villain. Silverstone became legally emancipated at the age of 15 in order to work the hours required for the shooting schedule of the film. Also in 1993, Silverstone auditioned for the lead role of Angela Chase in the ABC TV series My So-Called Life, but Claire Danes was chosen for the role instead. Alicia made some television movies in her early career including Torch Song, Cool and the Crazy and Scattered Dreams.
Alicia Silverstone in 2006
After seeing her in The Crush, Marty Callner decided Silverstone would be perfect for a role in a music video he was directing for the band Aerosmith, called "Cryin'"; she was subsequently cast in two more videos,"Amazing" and "Crazy". These were hugely successful for both the band and Silverstone, making her a household name (and also gaining her the nickname, "the Aerosmith chick"). They also got her noticed by filmmaker Amy Heckerling, who, after seeing them, decided to cast her in Clueless.
Clueless became a sleeper hit and critical darling during the summer of 1995. Silverstone's performance was well received, and she was branded the spokeswoman for an emerging young generation. As a result, she signed a deal with Columbia-TriStar worth $10 million. As part of the package, she got a three-year first-look deal for her own production company, First Kiss Productions. Silverstone also won "Best Female Performance" and "Most Desirable Female" at the 1996 MTV Movie Awards for her performance in the film. In the same year, Silverstone starred in the erotic thriller The Babysitter, film adaptation of the novel by Dean Koontz, Hideaway and the French drama about Americans New World.
Silverstone's next role was as Batgirl in Batman & Robin, and while it was not a critical success,[4] the film grossed $238,207,122 worldwide, and was thus a moderate financial success.[5] Silverstone's turn as Batgirl was not well received, and won her a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress.[6] She suffered further bad press for allegedly striking a pedestrian with her vehicle in a crosswalk.[7] In addition to Batman & Robin, Silverstone also starred alongside Benicio del Toro and Christopher Walken in 1997's dark comedyExcess Baggage, which was the first movie to be released by her production company. In the film, Silverstone played a rich brat who fakes her own kidnapping in order to get her father's attention. While not as reviled as Batman & Robin, the film was not as critically or commercially successful as Clueless.[8]
In 2000, Silverstone appeared in Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of the Shakespeare play Love's Labour's Lost, in which she was required to sing and dance. In 2001, Silverstone provided the voice of Sharon Spitz, the lead character in the Canadian animated television Braceface. During this time she also made the films Global Heresy and Scorched. After removing herself from the public eye for a few years, she resurfaced in the short-lived 2003 NBC television show Miss Match, which was cancelled after 11 episodes. Silverstone later acknowledged that she hates the trappings of fame, stating that "Fame is not anything I wish on anyone. You start acting because you love it. Then success arrives, and suddenly you're on show".[10]
After the cancellation of Miss Match in 2003, Silverstone did a pilot with FOX called Queen B, in which she would have played a former high school prom queen named Beatrice (Bea) who has discovered that the real world is nothing like high school. It was not picked up for production. In 2005, she co-starred with Queen Latifah in Beauty Shop, a spin-off of the BarberShop films, as one of the stylists in the beauty shop. In the same year, she played a reporter alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. in Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, which was successful at box office, and the direct-to-video film Silence Becomes You.
Silverstone wrote a diet book entitled The Kind Diet; it "explores the connection between what we put in our bodies and what we’re doing to the planet, and how choosing the right foods in the kitchen can help you feeling lighter, sexier, and more alive."[11] From February 10 to March 15 2009, she will star in the world premiere of Daniel Sullivan's Time Stands Still at the Geffern Playhouse LA, alongside Anna Gunn, Robin Thomas and David Harbour. The play focuses around a longtime couple and journalistic team who return to New York from an extended stint in the war-torn Middle East. Her performance was described as "a formidable stage presence who creates sparks whenever she performs" [12]
Silverstone is filming Elektra Luxx, along with Timothy Olyphant and Carla Gugino. The movie is a sequel to Women In Trouble, where Gugino plays a porn star whose life is turned upside down when she discovered she is pregnant. The film will be directed by Sebastian Gutierrez and a third installment is planned tentatively titled Women In Ecstasy. She also starred in Rob Thomas' 2009 music video for his single "Her Diamonds."
Silverstone married her longtime boyfriend, rock musician Christopher Jarecki (lead singer of group S.T.U.N.), in a beachfront ceremony at Lake Tahoe, on June 11, 2005. After meeting outside a movie theater in 1997, the couple dated for eight years prior to their marriage.[13] They got engaged about a year before their marriage and Jarecki presented Silverstone with an engagement ring that had belonged to his grandmother.[14] Her wedding dress was designed by Monique Lhuillier.
Silverstone and Jarecki live in an eco-friendlyLos Angeles house complete with solar panels and an organicvegetable garden.[13] She bought the house, shared with a "menagerie of rescued dogs," in 1996.[14] She also graced the cover of 944 magazine, promoting vegetarianism.
Political convictions
Silverstone is noted for being an animal welfare and environmental activist. She became a vegan in 1998 after attending an animal rights meeting. "I realized that I was the problem," she told InStyle Home, in spring 2007. "I was an animal lover who was eating animals."[13] In 2004, Silverstone was voted, "Sexiest Female Vegetarian," by PETA. In 2007, Silverstone appeared nude in a print advertisement and 30-second commercial for PETA championing vegetarianism; the TV spot was subsequently pulled from the Houston, Texas, market by Comcast Cable.[15] Silverstone has set up a sanctuary for rescued pets in Los Angeles.[16] She has revealed she struggled with childhood vegetarianism stating "There were times when I would get selfish and eat meat - at eight years old it's hard to stick to your guns - and so through the years I was always starting and stopping trying to be a vegetarian." [17]
On May 23, 2007, Silverstone was a guest on ABC's The View. Moments before she entered, hosts Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck had a heated argument regarding the Iraq war. The video segment[19] shows Silverstone entering and walking past Hasselbeck to greet the other hosts. Though the interview continued normally and featured easy conversation between Silverstone and Hasselbeck, Access Hollywood[20] deemed the act a deliberate snub. Hasselbeck later revealed, on an episode of The View which aired September 19, 2007, that Silverstone called and apologized for the incident. Hasselbeck said that Silverstone never meant to be rude, but was simply nervous when she walked on the stage and believed that incident was wrongly perceived by the media.
Silverstone has been appeared on the covers of Cosmopolitan, Entertainment Weekly, FHM, Rolling Stone, and other magazines. She appeared in FHM's Denmark, Australia, Netherlands, German, Dutch, South African, Danish, Russian and Romanian editions 100 Sexiest Women lists in several times. She has been ranked #5 in Australia's 100 Sexiest Women list in 1998. She has been ranked #3 in FHM-US's Cover Girls.
