Alicia Silverstone: Aerosmith's ‘Cryin’ to ‘Batman & Robin’ body-shaming, charting the return of Cher Horowitz
Alicia Silverstone, now 43, was once called a “knocked-out, dreamy-eyed little Rapunzel” when she was just an 18-year-old breakout movie star. You may remember her as the Batgirl from the 1997 film ‘Batman & Robin’.
The actress, who was named Worst Supporting Actress at the 1998 Razzies for her role, doesn't have pleasant memories from the sets of the fourth and final installment of the Warner Bros big-budget superhero film based on DC Comics characters. In a recent tell-all Guardian interview, she opened up about Joel Schumacher’s criticized movie and confessed, “That definitely wasn’t my favorite film-making experience.”
It was particularly so, because of all the attention to her weight. “They would make fun of my body when I was younger,” she said. “It was hurtful but I knew they were wrong. I wasn’t confused. I knew that it was not right to make fun of someone’s body shape, that doesn’t seem like the right thing to be doing to a human.”
The low point for her was when a journalist asked for her bra size during an interview. “I stopped loving acting for a very long time,” she even went on to say, and added, “There were working circumstances that were less than favorable in terms of how things went down. And no, I didn’t say ‘f**k you’ and come out like a warrior but I would just walk away and go, OK I know what that is and I’m done, I’m not going near that again.”
Starring as Barbara Wilson might not have been the best part of her career, but her rise to stardom is no less than a pipe dream. After a wondrous 1993 debut in ‘The Crush’, she clinched the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance and Best Villain. When director Marty Callner saw the movie, he was convinced Silverstone was perfect for Aerosmith's ‘Cryin’ music video.
That was the masterstroke. Soon, she was seen in subsequent videos of ‘Amazing’ and ‘Crazy’ as well. Not only did it help elevate the band's popularity, but made viewers swoon for the cat-eyed beauty.
Filmmaker Amy Heckerling then decided to cast her as Cher Horowitz in ‘Clueless’. She played a sweet but spoiled girl living in Beverly Hills and was deemed the woman of the hour. Of those times, she said, “It was really just extreme how I was being talked to and talked about. I think I just got really turned off by it.” In no time, she signed a contract with Columbia Pictures—and the deal of over $8 million—was like a pot of gold.
In 1997, she starred in a film by her own production company, ‘Excess Baggage’. But after ‘Batman & Robin’, something changed. She moved towards small-scale indie movies and David Mamet's plays like ‘Boston Marriage’ and ‘Speed-the-Plow’ ignited the spark in her once again.
In the same interview, she says, “My body was just like, this is what I’m meant to do, I love it so much, I need to find a way to do both, to be able to be an actress and be an activist at the same time so that’s what I did.” At 30, her agent advised her to say yes to a film only if she thought it was an “earth-shaking” shift. And a few “weird movies” caught her eye, including the psychological thriller ‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer’ and horror film ‘The Lodge’.
Theatre, movies and television have kept her going. In 2003, she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy for her role in NBC's ‘Miss Match’. Just recently, she was seen in a snappy comedy flick ‘Bad Therapy’.
Her professional life, meanwhile, has been stable. She dated rock musician Christopher Jarecki for eight long years before the two got hitched in a beachfront ceremony at Lake Tahoe in 2005. The couple set an example with their lifestyle by moving to an eco-friendly house in Los Angeles, packed with solar panels and an organic vegetable garden and a menagerie of rescued dogs.
The couple parted ways in 2018 and have a son together. An activist and environmentalist, Silverstone has always endorsed PETA and even penned down a vegan cookbook, The Kind Diet. In times of the coronavirus crisis, she has been actively taking part in several initiatives. “I’m an activist so I’m kind of used to suffering in terms of what is going in with the world with the climate and looking at the abuse that’s going on,” she said. “This is very surreal and different but at the same time, I’ve been dealing with this for 25 years.”