Alicia Silverstone
Silverstone photographed by Jerry Avenaim, 2005
Born	October 4, 1976 (1976-10-04) (age 32) San Francisco, California, USA
Years active	1992 - present
Spouse(s)	Christopher Jarecki (2005–present)
Awards won Emmy Awards Nominated: Outstanding Performer in an Animated Film 2002 Braceface Golden Globe Awards Nominated: Best Leading Actress in a Comedy Series 2003 Miss Match Golden Raspberry Awards Worst Supporting Actress 1997 Batman & Robin Other awards National Board of Review for Best Breakthrough Performer 1995, Clueless American Comedy Award for Best Actress 1995, Clueless

Alicia Silverstone (pronounced /əˈliːsiə ˈsɪlvɚstoʊn/; born October 4, 1976) is an American film and stage actress and former fashion model. She first came to widespread attention in music videos for Aerosmith, and is best known for her roles in Hollywood films such as Clueless (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997).

Biography

Early life

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-estate investor.¹² Silverstone was raised in a "traditional Jewish household"; her father, a native of East London, is Jewish, and her mother converted to Conservative 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, 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.

Career

Alicia has won several awards for her film performances including MTV Movie Awards, National Board of Review, and Young Artist Awards. She has been nominated for an Emmy award and a Golden Globe Award. During her career, she turned down several key roles in films, including Dede Truitt in The Opposite of Sex, Nicole in My Father the Hero, Juliet Capulet in Romeo + Juliet and a role in Scream 3. She was also considered for roles in Scream 2, Bewitched, Little Women and Heartbreakers. She had also turned down the role of Valerie Malone on Beverly Hills, 90210 in 1994; Tiffani Thiessen was cast instead.

1990s

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.

After seeing her in The Crush, Marty Callner decided she 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 film maker Amy Heckerling, who after seeing them decided to cast her in Clueless.

Alicia Silverstone

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 Awardsfor 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 success⁴, 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 comedy Excess 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 .

Alicia ended the 1990s with the Saturn Award-nominated romance/comedy film Blast from the Past which also stars Brendan Fraser, Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek.

2000s

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 shortlived 2003 NBC television show Miss Match, which was canceled after 18 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".⁹

After the cancellation of Miss Match in 2003, she 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 syndication. 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.

In 2006, she starred in another pilot for ABC called Pink Collar, in which she would have worked in a law firm. Like Queen B, this pilot was not picked up for syndication. That year she also starred alongside Ewan McGregor, Mickey Rourke and Sophie Okonedo in the film, Stormbreaker, and starred in the Hallmark Hall of Fame made-for-TV movie Candles on Bay Street based on the book by Cathie Pelletier. She is filmed a pilot for ABC alongside Megan Mullally called Bad Mother's Handbook. She made a cameo appearance in 2008 comedy film Tropic Thunder.

She is currently writing 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." ¹⁰ She will star in an LA-based play in January 2009.

In a recent interview with Graham Norton on his successful UK entertainment series, Alicia Silverstone stated that she is currently in talks about reprising the role of Cher in the up coming sequel to Clueless. Cluless: High School Reunion is set to go into production in April 2009.

Personal life

She has dated famous people including Benicio del Toro, Stephen Dorff, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bryan Mashard, Mozie Chabbouth and Adam Sandler. In a January 2000 interview with FHM, she denied that she dated Kenneth Branagh.

Silverstone married 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.¹¹ They got engaged about a year before their marriage and Jarecki presented Silverstone with an engagement ring that had belonged to his grandmother.¹² Her wedding dress was designed by Monique Lhuillier.

Silverstone and Jarecki live in an eco-friendly Los Angeles house complete with solar panels and an organic vegetable garden.¹¹ She bought the house, shared with a "menagerie of rescued dogs," in 1996.¹² Silverstone drives a Mercedes Benz.¹¹ She is often seen around with gal pal socialite K.J. Stevens.¹¹

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."¹¹ 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.¹³ Silverstone has set up a sanctuary for rescued pets in Los Angeles.¹⁴

Federal campaign contribution records also reveal that Silverstone contributed US$500 to Dennis Kucinich's 2004 Presidential campaign¹⁵.

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 segment¹⁶ 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 Hollywood¹⁷ 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.

She was a supporter of Barack Obama's presidential candidacy.¹⁸

Awards and nominations

¹⁹

Filmography

Theater

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alicia Silverstone

• Alicia Silverstone at the Internet Movie Database
• Alicia Silverstone at PETA (including the ad)
• Alicia Silverstone Video at TV-Click