Background and career
Brittany Anne Murphy-Monjack (née Bertolotti; November 10, 1977 – December 20, 2009) was an American actress and singer, noted for her work in comedy and drama. Murphy moved to Los Angeles as a teenager and began her acting career at the age of thirteen. Her breakthrough role was Tai Frasier in Clueless (1995), followed by supporting roles in independent films such as Freeway (1996) and Bongwater (1998). She made her theatrical debut in a Broadway production of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge in 1997, before starring as Daisy Randone in Girl, Interrupted (1999) and Lisa Swenson in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999). In the 2000s she played the patient Elisabeth Burrows in Don't Say a Word (2001), alongside Michael Douglas, and Alex Latourno in 8 Mile (2002), for which she garnered critical acclaim. Her subsequent roles included Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), Spun (2002), Just Married (2003), Uptown Girls (2003), Sin City (2005), and Happy Feet (2006). She also voiced the character Luanne Platter in the animated television series King of the Hill (1997–2010). On The Ramen Girl (2008), she served as a producer in addition to acting. Her final film project was Something Wicked, released in 2014. She also dabbled in music, being able to sing and play the piano and trumpet from childhood. In the early 1990s she was part of the band Blessed Soul, alongside actor Eric Balfour. The band did not release an album. She featured on British DJ Paul Oakenfold's single "Faster Kill Pussycat" in 2006, and in the same year covered two songs, Queen's "Somebody to Love" and Earth, Wind & Fire's "Boogie Wonderland", for the soundtrack of the film Happy Feet. On December 20, 2009, Murphy died aged 32, under disputed circumstances. The coroner's verdict stated that the cause of death was pneumonia, exacerbated by anemia and addiction to several prescription medications. Five months after her death, her husband, Simon Monjack, died of the same causes. The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services had considered toxic mold emanating from their home as a possible cause of death; however, Los Angeles Deputy Coroner Ed Winter stated that there were "no indicators" that mold was a factor. In January 2012, the actress's father, Angelo Bertolotti, filed a petition in the Superior Court of California asking that the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office release hair samples from his daughter for independent testing, claiming she was poisoned; the suit was dismissed. In November 2013, he claimed that a toxicology report showed that deliberate poisoning by heavy metals, including antimony and barium, was a possible cause of death. Following her death, a series of biographical documentaries were made about her life. The Brittany Murphy Story—starring Amanda Fuller as Murphy, Sherilyn Fenn as her mother Sharon, and Eric Petersen as Monjack—aired on Lifetime on September 6, 2014. It received negative reviews from the media, who criticized Fuller's poor performance. In 2020, another documentary called Brittany Murphy: An ID Mystery aired on Investigation Discovery, in which the documentary filmmakers go into more detail about her death. A year later, the streaming service HBO Max released the two-part miniseries What Happened, Brittany Murphy? (2021), which featured several people close to the actress, including Kathy Najimy, Taryn Manning, Lisa Rieffel, and director Amy Heckerling. In 2023, the streaming service Tubi released a documentary called Gone Before Her Time: Brittany Murphy, which also explored her personal life and death.
Murphy was born Brittany Anne Bertolotti on November 10, 1977, at Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta, to Sharon Kathleen Murphy and Angelo Joseph Bertolotti, who divorced when their daughter was three years old. She was raised by her mother in Edison, New Jersey, and attended middle school there before moving out west. Angelo during this period was arrested on charges of drug possession, later spending twelve years in prison; he had dealings with the Italian mafia, operating as an entrepreneur and diplomat for organized crime families. She later stated that due to Sharon's financial problems, she had to eat spaghetti every night. She also said that, on certain occasions, she had to beg her mother to buy clothes at Kmart. This would later explain Murphy's marked social investment in homeless causes, as discussed in a February 2003 article in Glamour magazine. In 1991, before she started high school, the family moved to Los Angeles so that Murphy could pursue an acting career. Murphy said her mother never tried to stifle her creativity, and she considered her mother a crucial factor in her later success: "When I asked my mom to move to California, she sold everything and moved out here for me. She always believed in me." Murphy's mother is of Irish and Slovak descent, and her father is of Italian descent. She was raised a Baptist and later became a non-denominational Christian. She had two older half-brothers and a younger half-sister.
In 1982, she attended the Verne Fowler School of Dance and Theater Arts in Colonia, New Jersey. From the age of four, she trained in singing, dancing and acting until she moved to California when she was thirteen. In 1987, at the age of ten, she made her theatrical debut in a production of Really Rosie in which her performance was praised by her teachers; and she also sang in a production of Les Misérables. She stood out for being energetic when acting. She went so far as to say that "my first memories were wanting... to entertain people." She debuted in 1991 playing the role of Frank's sister in one episode of the television show Murphy Brown. She later got her first job in Hollywood at the age of thirteen, playing the role of Brenda Drexell in the series Drexell's Class. She then went on to play Molly Morgan in the TV series Almost Home. She appeared as a guest star on several television series, including Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Blossom, seaQuest 2032, Murder One and Frasier. She had recurring roles on Party of Five, Boy Meets World and Sister, Sister. Her breakthrough role was in her second feature film, the teen comedy Clueless (1995), directed by Amy Heckerling, which developed a cult following. Filming began in November 1994, at which time she was barely seventeen years old, making her the youngest member of the cast. Her performance in the film was praised by both the media and critics: John Menter, an acting teacher during Murphy's childhood, said: "It wasn't until I saw her, sitting in the theater, who I felt she would be a huge star." During filming, as she could not attend high school, she had educational tutors. The film was a sleeper hit, grossing US$56 million against its budget of US$12 million. Clueless is a loose adaptation of the novel Emma (1815) by Jane Austen, and many of its characters have counterparts in the novel. Soon after, her mother Sharon was diagnosed with breast cancer, whom she was forced to take care of after the release of Clueless. She made her Broadway debut in 1997 playing the role of Catherine, in a new version of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge along with actors Anthony LaPaglia and Allison Janney. She continued with roles in Freeway (1996), with Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland, and the independent comedy Bongwater (1998). In 1999, she appeared as Rivkah in the television film The Devil's Arithmetic, based on the novel of the same name by Jane Yolen and directed by Donna Deitch; filming took place in Lithuania and Canada in October 1998. Her performance was praised by Variety reviewer David Kronke, stating that she "brought a strange but intriguing ethereal quality to her performance." That same year she had a supporting role in James Mangold's Girl, Interrupted, as a troubled psychiatric patient alongside Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. She was nominated at the Young Artists Awards for Best Young Lead Actress in a Feature Film for Girl, Interrupted, on March 19, 2000. She later starred as an aspiring beauty queen in Drop Dead Gorgeous. She voiced the character of Luanne Platter in the Fox animated sitcom King of the Hill for the entirety of the show's original run from 1997 to 2009, and Joseph Gribble until the fifth season. She later said that she enjoyed doing voice-overs because they could be done at home, jokingly saying: "You can do it even in your pajamas." She was nominated for an Annie Award for voice acting for the King of the Hill episode "Movin' On Up" in 2000.
She began the 2000s playing certain roles, with Jody Marken in the thriller Cherry Falls (1999), and the lead role in Don't Say a Word (2001) alongside Michael Douglas, whose critical reception was negative, but his performance was praised. In 2002, she played the role of Alex Latourno in the film based on the life of American rapper Eminem, 8 Mile, which received critical acclaim, and was a success at the box office. She appeared alongside Dakota Fanning in Uptown Girls (2003), playing Molly Gunn, a twenty-two-year-old girl whose deceased father was a musician. Filming lasted from July to September 2002, and was filmed at Silvercup Studios in New York. In the same year she starred in the romantic comedy Just Married. The film did well at the box office, grossing more than 100 million dollars against a budget of 18 million, but it received negative reviews from both the press and film critics, which led to them appearing as nominees in the Razzie Awards for worst actor, worst supporting actress and worst on-screen couple for both. At that time her mother contracted breast cancer again, so Murphy had to take care of her again. A year later she played the lead role of Stacy Holt in Little Black Book (2004); this was another critical failure, for which reviewers focused on Murphy's poor performance. The film opened at number five at the North American box office, grossing US$7,075,217 in its opening weekend behind Collateral, The Village, The Bourne Supremacy and The Manchurian Candidate. The film finished its run with a domestic total of US$20,698,668 and an international addition of US$1,336,164, totaling US$22,034,832 worldwide. In 2005 she appeared in Sin City, directed by Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller and Quentin Tarantino. Film critic Roger Ebert frequently praised Murphy's acting talent and comic timing, giving good reviews to several of her films and comparing her to Lucille Ball:
As for Brittany Murphy, for me, it goes back to the 2003 Independent Spirit Awards [where] Murphy was assigned to present one of the awards. Her task was to read the names of the five nominees, open an envelope, and reveal the name of the winner. This she turned into an opportunity for screwball improvisational comedy, by pretending she could not follow this sequence, not even after the audience shouted instructions and the stage manager came to whisper in her ear not once but twice. There were those in the audience who were dumbfounded by her stupidity. I was dumbfounded by her brilliance. Murphy followed with several independent films, including Spun (2002), Neverwas (2005), and Karen Moncrieff's The Dead Girl (2006), as well as two Edward Burns films: Sidewalks of New York (2001) and The Groomsmen (2006). She returned to voice acting with the critically acclaimed 2006 animated feature Happy Feet, as Gloria Penguin. In 2009, she was cast in the Lifetime TV movie Tribute, as the main character, Cilla. Murphy completed the thriller/drama Abandoned in June 2009 and it was released in 2010, after her death. In November 2009, Murphy left the production of The Caller, which was being filmed in Puerto Rico, and was replaced by Rachelle Lefevre. Murphy denied media reports that she had been fired from the project after being difficult on set, and cited "creative differences". Something Wicked, her final film, was released in 2014.
Murphy's career also included work as a singer. She was able to learn to play an instrument in just twenty minutes of practice, and learned to play the piano and trumpet at an early age. Regarding her voice, she commented: "My singing voice isn't like my speaking voice...I've just always kept it a secret and never taken credit because I wanted to learn how to work behind the microphone in a recording studio, and some of the singers don't even know it was me recording on their albums." In an interview she stated that her main musical influence was the American singer Madonna: "My dreams and aspirations when I was a child for as long as I can remember was to be an entertainer. I started out in dance classes and I've always sang for as long as I can remember. When I was nine I started doing musical theater in the New Jersey area, where I'm from. The quickest way to entertain more people was to audition for commercials and that was the first thing available since it was right over the Hudson River. Madonna had a quote, 'I'm going to change the world'–that was a huge inspiration to me so I decided I was going to be my own version of Madonna when I grew up". Plans to release a studio album were not carried out. She recorded unreleased demos that were never officially released, the song "Boomlay" was leaked on the Internet, it never completed and part of the recording was lost. She was in a band called Blessed Soul with fellow actor Eric Balfour in the early 1990s. On June 6, 2006, Murphy and Paul Oakenfold released the single "Faster Kill Pussycat", from the album A Lively Mind. The song became a club hit and hit number one on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play chart. It also hit number seven in Oakenfold's native United Kingdom in June 2006. She dabbled in music again with the release of the film Happy Feet, in which she covered Queen's "Somebody to Love" and Earth, Wind & Fire's "Boogie Wonderland". Murphy said about her character, Gloria, "Oddly enough, of all the characters I've played, Gloria is the most like me. And she's a penguin! George Miller always wanted one person to do both [the speaking and the singing]. I said, 'I can sing,' and I asked him to give me a shot. I don't think he took me very seriously, because most actors say they can do most things."
