Wanted: one leading man

In the Hollywood spotlight since her adolescence, Alicia Silverstone now finds herself trying to revive her once brilliant career. Which is where Sean Penn comes in


o Barbara Ellen
o The Observer,
o Sunday February 29 2004
o Article history

A film industry friend told me emphatically that I was going to 'just love' Alicia Silverstone and I did, apart from her bizarre and rather precious refusal to discuss her family background. Aside from that, she is delightful - bubbly and chatty when it came to talking about the majority of subjects ranging from her starring role as a matchmaking divorce lawyer in Miss Match, the new television project from Sex and the City creator, Darren Star ('It's so goofy and fun'), her ongoing efforts on behalf of animal-welfare charities (Silverstone is a staunch vegan) or combining growing up and running her own production company (she produced her first movie when she was 19).

In fact, overall, Silverstone is as warm and friendly as you'd imagine from her most famous role - the misguided but big-hearted Cher in Clueless - grabbing my arm at the end of the interview and asking if I might know any vegetarian restaurants because she is meeting up with Stella McCartney later that evening. It is only where her family background is concerned that Silverstone seems to clam up as fast and as prettily as any Hollywood oyster. Furthermore, when I phone her later and ask her to explain why she is so resistant about talking about her family, she gets very uptight and starts lecturing me about how 'it's no one else's business', 'she likes to keep things private' and to remember 'she's a human being'. Blimey.

We hear back that Silverstone hadn't wanted to talk about her British half-sister, Kezi, from her father's previous relationship but even that sounds a little odd. There doesn't seem to be any drama or enmity between them. And they first met 14-odd years ago, so you'd think Alicia had got over the shock by now. Nor has Kezi, a singer-songwriter and actress who has appeared in Footballers' Wives, ever milked her connection with her more famous sister. Indeed, considering Silverstone doesn't seem to have much to hide, it all seems like an extraordinary overreaction.

We meet in a room at Blakes Hotel in circumstances that are hardly ideal. It's right at the end of a long day of interviews for Silverstone, my time seems to have shrunk, and it soon becomes clear that we are supposed to talk on a small couch right in front of a double bed upon which sprawl three or four people quite brazenly staring and listening to us. Silverstone seems as uncomfortable with this situation as I am and I could hug her when she finally cracks and asks them to leave, exclaiming sweetly: 'I find myself thoroughly distracted.'

After that, Silverstone chats happily about how she came to accept the role of Katy Fox in Miss Match (lawyer by day, matchmaker by night). It seems she's got this new thing since finding herself dithering about appearing in The Graduate on Broadway. 'I really wanted to go on Broadway but I was like - do I want to leave my dogs, my house and my friends for nine months? But then I thought, "Wait a second. If this wasn't being offered to me and I heard there was an audition I'd be desperate to have the job." When you're offered things, it makes it so much easier to be indecisive. And it's silly because you can pass on some really amazing things.'

When Star approached her, Silverstone applied the same trick to Miss Match with whom she stars with Ryan O'Neal. 'I thought, "Would I be mad if they hadn't offered it to me? Of course I would."'

Maybe not that mad. An NBC show in America, Miss Match is showing on a satellite channel, Living TV, over here, so stands a good chance of being totally ignored. Silverstone does a fine job as Fox (no one does spoiled princess with a heart of gold like she does) but the series itself is slightly flat, less edgy and attention-grabbing than Sex and the City. Silverstone seems to spend a fair amount of time smiling misty-eyed as lonely people get together and sighing whimsically as her father (O'Neal) sternly reminds her that they're trying to run a law firm not a dating agency. It's good eye-fudge though, one of those shows where even the cars look they've spent the morning in the beauty salon.

In Silverstone's view, it's all about giving it up for escapism. 'Sometimes I'll be doing a scene and I'm like, OK this would never happen in real life but it doesn't matter because it's really fun and entertaining, like all the romantic comedies out there. It's not supposed to be a documentary, you know what I mean.'

Alicia Silverstone was born in England in 1976. Her parents, Monty and Didi, are English and Alicia had an English accent until she was six. She was brought up on the outskirts of San Francisco where her father became a real- estate millionaire (Silverstone now lives in LA). At about eight, Silver stone started modelling, eventually putting the money into acting lessons. At 13, she and her brother, David, had a shock when they were introduced to Kezi, their 16-year-old half-sister, who had spent most of her childhood drudging her way through the British care system. Since then, they have all kept in touch with no big fall-outs to speak of.

So why wouldn't Silverstone want to talk about any of this? There's one bit of her personal history that took me by surprise - about how her career in child modelling began because her father took bizarre-sounding pictures of his young daughter in a bikini on all fours on a rug and sent them off to agencies - but Alicia herself has never seemed bothered about this.

However, it does beg the question - what kind of child was she? Where did all the early ambition come from? Silverstone has always said that by the age of 10, she knew she didn't want to be famous, but who's coming to those kinds of conclusions by the age of 10? Obviously the kind of child who models to pay for her own acting lessons. When I ask Silverstone if she was entirely comfortable with 'selling' herself at that age, she says she simply can't remember how she felt. She puts her motivation when she was younger down to a need for independence. 'I didn't want to be taken care of. I wanted to find my own way and do my own thing.' She smiles ruefully. 'Now I want to be taken care of.'

Silverstone describes the acting classes as 'going through puberty with a bunch of other young people - all very cathartic, maybe a form of therapy. While I was there, I was working through stuff that all teenagers have to process'. A spot on The Wonder Years led to the movie, The Crush , where Silverstone put in a wonderful performance as a psychotic besotted teenager. 'I made a very good nasty little girl.' To do The Crush at 15, Silverstone was told she had to get 'legally emancipated' from her parents so that she could work the crazy hours.

She gets annoyed when this 'divorce' is taken as any kind of comment on her family situation and insists that it was all about work. The Silverstones have since said that they weren't happy about it but allowed themselves to be convinced by Alicia's long-time agent and friend, Carolyn Kessler. After The Crush came some profile-raising appearances on a couple of Aerosmith videos (Silverstone is credited with reviving the grizzly rockers' careers), and then Clueless .

The frothy Rodeo Drive rejig of Jane Austen's Emma took £150 million at the box office and linked Silverstone forever with the label-crazy Cher despite her protestations. 'I hate to shop. Clothes make me dizzy.' She said sagely at the time: 'I seem to have been offered the chance to be the new Meg Ryan.' At this point, Silverstone, still only 18, landed herself a £7m multi-picture development deal, finding herself producing her first movie at 19 under an intense industry spotlight.

She insists she put 'sweat, blood and tears' into the film Excess Baggage, where she also starred opposite Benicio Del Toro. 'If I'm involved, I'm involved . Even if I'm not producing I act like a producer because I am a producer.' As it happened, Excess Baggage was a resounding flop, as was her next venture, Blast From the Past. Silverstone still produces, but the only thing you might have heard of is the successful underground cartoon, Braceface. Is it that she feels powerless as a mere actress? 'No,' she insists. 'It's not about power at all, it's about creativity.'

It took a Shakespearean turn in Kenneth Branagh's Love's Labour's Lost to revive a profile battered by her lacklustre appearance as Batgirl in Batman & Robin with George Clooney. Silverstone loathed playing second fiddle to special effects while wearing a stinking hot rubber suit (director Joel Schumacher's only direction was 'Breathe').

She also endured being romantically linked with just about every eligible male in Hollywood, from Del Toro to Leonardo DiCaprio to Adam Sandler (by contrast, going by her interviews cuttings, Silverstone is the most self-proclaimed 'boyfriendless' celebrity ever). Then there was the savage media teasing about her weight. Now, at 27, Silverstone looks slim and gorgeous with a flawless complexion, but back then, she was chased through airports by gangs of journalists chanting 'Fat girl... fat girl' to the Batman theme. That can't have been easy especially considering she was still barely 20?

'Well,' she says, 'when someone's horrible, it always hurts a little but I just hope that I was an example to other young girls that it was OK to be a healthy young girl.' She tells me that at her heaviest, there were only five to 10 lbs in it. 'So what's that about? There was a point when I was so sick of this physical perfection thing that I thought it would be good for all young girls to eat burgers and sweets as a rebellion but I don't think that anymore because it's not healthy.'

Anyway, she says, she's a vegan now and doesn't have to worry about that kind of thing. She also does yoga and Pilates and loves to walk her dogs. 'Because of my lifestyle, I feel really good and I don't think I would feel so good if I was always on some crazy diet.' Does she see herself as a role model? 'No, I don't ever think that way. I don't really use those labels probably because they've been put on me since I was little.'

After a lifetime of working, Silverstone says that these days she mainly likes to hang out with her rescued dogs and clean out her garage for relaxation. She campaigns tirelessly for animal charities and has donated huge amounts of money, which seems to underline her general sincerity and goes some way to diluting her unfortunate habit of coming out with phrases such as: 'I really truly want the world to be a better place for everybody.'

I try to get her bitching about models, like Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford, who featured in the Say No to Fur campaign some years ago, and then decided to say yes when the catwalk came a-calling, but Silverstone doesn't bite, just makes some bland comment about how 'disappointing' it is.

So what happens to her now? Silverstone is a talented actress but her career isn't exactly hopping at the moment and it's unlikely that Miss Match or her cameo in Scooby Doo 2 are going to put her back where she was. Rather than being the new Meg Ryan, Silverstone seems to have become something akin to a female Hugh Grant, both trapped in light comedy simply because they are so good at it but really desiring much meatier roles.

Even light comedy looks slightly precarious for Silverstone these days. Several new actresses, most notably Reese Witherspoon of Legally Blonde, seem to have taken over the Clueless persona and made it their own, leaving Silverstone... where exactly?

Silverstone says she doesn't think she's been fatally pigeonholed. 'You would have to ask my agent. I have a wonderful time doing whatever I want. The only actresses I've been jealous of were Cate Blanchett and Meryl Streep and in both cases I was way younger than they were.' She says she would love to work with Sean Penn, adding wryly: 'He doesn't often do light comedy but whatever he's doing I'd love to be in it.'

As a final question, I ask her to forget about work, just tell me what she wants most in the world right now? 'That's easy,' she laughs. 'Right now, all I want to do is move on to the beach. I really want to live on the beach and I don't know if I can afford it, so I've got to figure that out.' With her head to one side Silverstone gives me the famous kooky glance: 'Now I'm really serious...'

Producers to a woman

· Reese Witherspoon, 27, runs Type A Films with Debra Siegal, which produced Sweet Home Alabama, Legally Blonde and Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde.

· Jennifer Lopez, 33, has a studio-based production company, Nuyorican, with several projects under development.

· Drew Barrymore, 29, established Flower Films, which released its first film, Never Been Kissed, in 1999 and has since produced the Charlie's Angels films, both of which were huge box-office hits.

· Sandra Bullock, 39, set up the LA-based production company, Fortis Films, giving her serious clout in Hollywood. Run by her father, John, and sister, Gesine, the company produced the box-office success Miss Congeniality and the romantic comedy, Two Weeks Notice.

· As the head of Shoelace Productions (now Red Om Films), Julia Roberts, 36, has become one of the most important women in entertainment in the US. In 2002, Red Om bought the rights to Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl: A Novel, a racy title by former working girl Tracy Quan.

· Christina Ricci, 24, formed Blaspheme Films in the late 1990s, which produced Prozac Nation and The Speed Queen among others. The company is currently working on cult comedy, Adrenalynn.

Martha Housden