Alicia Silverstone

For many viewers, Alicia Silverstone will always be Cher Horowitz, the sweet, spoiled Beverly Hills teenager at the centre of Amy Heckerling’s Clueless. It is a defining comic performance, buoyant and precise without losing sight of Cher’s essential kindness. Yet Silverstone’s career has travelled well beyond that 1995 hit, moving through thrillers, studio productions, independent films, television and theatre. Born in San Francisco on October 4, 1976, Silverstone began modelling at eight and later appeared in television commercials. Her first credited acting role came in a 1992 episode of The Wonder Years. She made her film debut as the dangerously fixated teenager in The Crush, winning Best Breakthrough Performance and Best Villain at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards. Appearances in Aerosmith’s videos for “Cryin’,” “Amazing” and “Crazy” further raised her profile before Heckerling cast her in Clueless. Silverstone followed that breakthrough with a run of very different parts, including Batgirl in Batman & Robin, a young woman staging her own kidnapping in Excess Baggage and the female lead opposite Brendan Fraser in Blast from the Past. Excess Baggage was also the first film released by her production company, First Kiss Productions. Rather than remain fixed in the studio spotlight, Silverstone increasingly turned toward smaller films and the stage. She appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, voiced and executive produced the animated series Braceface, made her Broadway debut in The Graduate and earned a Golden Globe nomination for the television comedy Miss Match. Later stage work included Boston Marriage, Speed-the-Plow and Time Stands Still. Her film choices have continued to range widely. She reunited with Heckerling for Vamps, appeared in Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer and joined the ensemble of Book Club. More recent screen work includes The Baby-Sitters Club, Reptile, Y2K and Krazy House. Across comedy, psychological drama and genre filmmaking, Silverstone has shown a willingness to shift scale and tone rather than simply repeat the role that first made her widely known.