Alicia Silverstone

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Alicia Silverstone
Silverstone photographed by Jerry Avenaim, 2005
Born	October 4, 1976 (1976-10-04) (age 31) San Francisco, California
Years active	1992 - present
Spouse(s)	Christopher Jarecki (2005–present)
Awards won Golden Raspberry Awards Worst Supporting Actress 1997 Batman & Robin

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

[edit] Early life

Silverstone was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Deirdre "Didi" (née Radford), a Scotland-born former flight attendant who worked for Pan Am, and Monty Silverstone, an England-born real-estate investor.^[1][2] 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. Silverstone visited England over a summer during childhood. 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 Wonder Years.

[edit] Career

[edit] 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 her affections are spurned; she won two awards at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards for the role for 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. After seeing her in The Crush, Marty Callner decided she'd be perfect for a role in a music video he was directing for the band Aerosmith, called "Cryin'", and then the following two videos "Amazing" and "Crazy". These were hugely successful both for 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" by the MTV Movie Awards in 1996 for her performance in the film.

Silverstone's next role was as Batgirl in Batman & Robin, which was neither a critical^[4] nor a financial success.^[5] Silverstone won 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] She also starred 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 embraced as Clueless.^[8]

[edit] 2000s

Silverstone at the Stormbreaker premiere in July 2006

Silverstone appeared in Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of the Shakespeare play Love's Labour's Lost in 2000, 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. After removing herself from the public eye for a few years, she resurfaced in the 2003 NBC television show Miss Match, which was then cancelled after 18 episodes. Silverstone later acknowledged that she hates the trappings of fame. According to Silverstone, "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 found out that the real world is nothing like high school. In 2005, she co-starred with Queen Latifah in Beauty Shop, a spin-off of the BarberShop films. She played one of the stylists in the beauty shop. For the pilot season of 2006-2007, she surfaced on a pilot being developed by ABC called Pink Collar, in which she would have worked in a law firm. Silverstone's most recent movie, Stormbreaker, was released in the UK on July 21, 2006, and in North America on October 13, 2006. She appeared alongside Ewan McGregor and Sophie Okonedo. In November 2006, she starred in the made-for-TV movie Candles on Bay Street for Hallmark Hall of Fame, based on the book by Cathie Pelletier.

[edit] Personal life

She has dated famous actors including Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro and Adam Sandler.

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. The couple had dated for eight years prior to being married, after meeting outside a movie theater in 1997.^[10] They got engaged about a year before their marriage and Silverstone's engagement ring belonged to Jarecki's grandmother.^[11] They live in an eco-friendly Los Angeles house complete with solar panels and an organic vegetable garden.^[10] She bought the house, shared with a "menagerie of rescued dogs," in 1996.^[11] Silverstone drives a Mercedes Benz.^[10] She is often seen around with gal pal socialite KJ Stevens.^[10]

[edit] Political beliefs

Silverstone is noted for being an animal welfare and environmental activist. She also 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."^[10] 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, and the TV spot was subsequently pulled from the Houston, Texas, market by Comcast Cable.^[12] Silverstone set up a sanctuary for rescued pets in Los Angeles.^[13]

Federal campaign contribution records^[14] also reveal that Silverstone contributed $500 to Dennis Kucinich's 2004 Presidential campaign.

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^[15] 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^[16] 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.

[edit] Awards and nominations

^[17]

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Plays

[edit] References

[edit] 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 Fans - Fansite
• aliciasilverstone.com
• Alicia Silverstone Video at TV-Click