Background and career
Alicia Silverstone ( ə-LEE-see-ə; born October 4, 1976) is an American actress. She made her film debut in the thriller The Crush (1993), earning the 1994 MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance, and gained further prominence as a teen idol when she appeared in the music videos for Aerosmith's songs "Cryin'", "Amazing", and "Crazy". She went on to star as Cher Horowitz in the teen comedy film Clueless (1995), which earned her a multi-million-dollar deal with Columbia Pictures. In 1997, she portrayed Batgirl in the superhero film Batman & Robin. Silverstone received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy for her role in the short-lived NBC series Miss Match (2003). She has continued to act in film, television and on stage. A vegan, Silverstone has endorsed PETA activities and published two cookbooks: The Kind Diet (2009) and The Kind Mama (2014).
Silverstone was born on October 4, 1976, in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Deirdre "Didi" Silverstone (née Radford), a Scottish former Pan Am flight attendant, and Monty Silverstone, an English real estate agent. Silverstone has two older siblings: a half-sister from her father's previous marriage, Kezi Silverstone, and a brother, David Silverstone. She grew up in Hillsborough, California. Her father was born to a Jewish family and her mother converted to Conservative Judaism before marriage. Silverstone had a bat mitzvah ceremony. She began modeling when she was eight, and was cast in television commercials, with the first being for Domino's Pizza at the age of fourteen. She attended Crocker Middle School, then San Mateo High School.
Her first credited acting role was on The Wonder Years in 1992, in the episode "Road Test", as Kevin's high school "dream girl". Silverstone made her film debut when she obtained the leading role in the erotic thriller The Crush, playing a teenage girl who sets out to ruin an older man after he spurns her affections; she became legally emancipated at the age of 15 to work the hours required for the shooting schedule of the film. She won two awards at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards for the role—Best Breakthrough Performance and Best Villain. Silverstone made some television films in her early career, including Torch Song, Cool and the Crazy, and Scattered Dreams. After seeing her in The Crush, Marty Callner decided Silverstone would be perfect for a role in a music video he was directing for Aerosmith, called "Cryin'." Silverstone is shown getting a navel piercing in the music video, which has largely been credited as introducing the navel piercing to mainstream culture. She was subsequently cast in two more Aerosmith videos, "Amazing" and "Crazy". These were hugely successful for both the band and Silverstone, making her a household name. After seeing Silverstone in the three videos, filmmaker Amy Heckerling decided to cast her in the coming-of-age comedy Clueless, in the role of Cher Horowitz, a sweet but spoiled girl living in Beverly Hills. Clueless became a hit and critical darling during the summer of 1995, and as a result, Silverstone signed a deal with Columbia-TriStar valued between $8 and $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, plus awards from Blockbuster Entertainment Award, Kids' Choice Awards, National Board of Review and an American Comedy Award for her performance in the film. Silverstone had three other film releases in 1995—Le Nouveau monde, Hideaway and The Babysitter. Le Nouveau monde, which is a French drama about Americans, saw her play the love interest of a French boy. In the film adaptation of the novel by Dean Koontz, Hideaway, she played a teenage girl whose father dies in a car accident and is revived two hours later. The film The Babysitter was a B erotic thriller directed by Guy Ferland based on the eponymous short story by Robert Coover in his 1969 collection Pricksongs and Descants. In 1996, she starred in the direct-to-video thriller True Crime as a Catholic school student searching for a murderer of teenage girls. Her next role was Barbara Wilson/Batgirl in Batman & Robin (1997). Budgeted at $160 million, the film grossed a modest $238 million worldwide, and her turn as Batgirl received polarized reviews from critics, who also considered the film to be one of the worst films of all time. Silverstone won a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress, but received a Blimp Award at the Kids' Choice Awards for the role. Also in 1997, the first film by Silverstone's production company, Excess Baggage, was released. In the film, she plays a young woman who stages her own kidnapping to get her wealthy father's attention, only to actually be kidnapped by a car thief. The film only grossed $14.5 million in North America, and received mediocre reviews from critics; Roger Ebert wrote that she was miscast and gave a performance that was "no better than OK". Silverstone starred as the female lead in the romantic comedy Blast from the Past (1999), directed by Hugh Wilson and co-starring Brendan Fraser, Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek. Critical response towards the film was mixed, while it made a modest $40 million globally.
For the next decade, Silverstone stepped aside from the spotlight and opted to focus on smaller-scale films and theater. In Love's Labour's Lost (2000), a film adaptation of William Shakespeare's play, directed by Kenneth Branagh, Silverstone played the Princess of France, a role which required her to sing and dance. While critical response was mixed, the film received a limited theatrical release. Film critic James Berardinelli felt that Silverstone, "while not completely at ease with all of her dialogue, is surprisingly credible" in her portrayal. Silverstone executive produced and provided the voice of Sharon Spitz, the lead part, in the Canadian animated television series Braceface, from 2001 to 2003. During this period, she played the bassist of a rock band in the independent comedy Global Heresy (2002), opposite Peter O'Toole and Joan Plowright, and made her Broadway debut alongside Kathleen Turner and Jason Biggs in a stage version of The Graduate, which ran between 2002 and 2003 at the Plymouth Theatre. Silverstone also starred as one of several disgruntled bank employees trying to rob the same bank in the small-scale comedy Scorched (2003), co-starring Rachael Leigh Cook, Woody Harrelson and John Cleese. Silverstone signed on to headline the 2003 NBC television series Miss Match, as Kate Fox, a Los Angeles matrimonial attorney who doubles as a high-end matchmaker. The show was canceled after only 11 episodes had aired, and Variety in its review for the show, wrote: "It's a shame that she's stuck with such wafer-thin material here, because Silverstone is undoubtedly a fun, perky presence on the small screen." Nevertheless, she earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy.
In 2004, Silverstone played a news reporter turned villainess in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, opposite Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. Despite a negative critical response, the film grossed $181 million at the international box office. In the comedy Beauty Shop (2005), a spinoff of the Barbershop film franchise, Silverstone appeared with Queen Latifah, playing a naive and bubbly stylist of an Atlanta-area salon. The film was her final wide release of the decade in North America, where it grossed $37.2 million. Her next film, the thriller Silence Becomes You, received a DVD release in 2005. Silverstone did a pilot episode in 2005 with Fox called Queen B, where she played a delusional former high school prom queen, but it was not picked up for production. In 2006, she starred in an ABC pilot called Pink Collar as a woman working in a law firm, but like Queen B, this pilot was not picked up to series. Silverstone portrayed the close friend of a teenager turned secret agent in the action-spy film Stormbreaker (2006), directed by Geoffrey Sax and co-starring Alex Pettyfer, Ewan McGregor and Mickey Rourke. Despite a $40 million budget, the film made $23 million worldwide and was largely dismissed by critics. USA Today described Silverstone as "simply ghastly" in her role, while View London remarked that there was "strong support" from the actress. She obtained the role of a single mother returning to her hometown after a lengthy absence in the made-for-Hallmark Hall of Fame television film Candles on Bay Street, based on the book by Cathie Pelletier. Silverstone continued her theater work, next appearing in David Mamet's Boston Marriage (2007), a play exploring the relationship between two upper-class women, where the actress played what was described by Los Angeles Times as the "clueless and hyper-emotional Scottish maid" of one of them. The production was presented at the Geffen Playhouse theater in Los Angeles, with Variety writing that Silverstone "steals the show [in her role]. Her Scottish accent is good, her comic delivery is fresh, and she gets the maximum laugh value from each wobbly curtsey. Her character is the one thing in the show that Mamet gets absolutely right, although she is used a bit repetitively." In the same year, she starred as a secretary in the theater production Speed-the-Plow, a satire of Hollywood executives. The production, presented at Geffen Playhouse, was directed by Randall Arney and penned by David Mamet. The Hollywood Reporter concluded the play was "fueled" by "a spectacular tour de force" from Silverstone. In 2008, Silverstone filmed another unaired ABC pilot alongside Megan Mullally called Bad Mother's Handbook and made a cameo appearance in the action-comedy Tropic Thunder. In 2009, she starred in the music video for Rob Thomas's single "Her Diamonds", and acted in Donald Margulies' production of Time Stands Still, set in Brooklyn and revolving around the relationships of two couples. Like Silverstone's previous few stage projects, it ran at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. By the late 2000s, she ventured into writing, releasing her book The Kind Diet, a guide to vegan nutrition, in 2009; she simultaneously launched its associated website The Kind Life. The Kind Diet topped the "Hardcover Advice & Misc." category of The New York Times bestseller list.
Silverstone continued to focus on theater and independent productions throughout the 2010s, but acted considerably more than in the previous decade. In 2010, she reprised her role in the Broadway production of Time Stands Still, alongside Laura Linney. Daniel Sullivan directed the play, and described Silverstone as "a breath of fresh air" which had a general positive reception among critics. The New York Times felt that Silverstone "brings warmth, actorly intelligence, and delicate humor." She filmed a small segment in the independent comedy sequel Elektra Luxx (2010), but her part was not included in the final cut of the film. Silverstone obtained the role of the teacher of a Manhattan private-school senior in the teen romance drama The Art of Getting By (2011), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The ensemble comedy Butter (2011) saw her play the adoptive mother of a 12-year-old African-American girl who enters a local butter sculpturing competition in a small Iowa town. The film screened on the film festival circuit and was distributed in a limited release. She reunited with Clueless director Amy Heckerling in the independent film Vamps (2012), playing one of two vampires who fall in love and face a choice that could jeopardize their immortality. She was offered the role after Heckerling came to see her in Time Stands Still. Despite a very limited release, Variety found the film to be "a refreshing change of pace [...] with an irresistible cast".
