• Alicia Silverstone’s career got off to a fast start. A few years ago, if you had asked a Hollywood executive who the next big star would be, they probably would have said Alicia. However since then her career has suffered a series of let downs and her once rosy future now looks cloudy. Alicia was born October 4th, 1976 in San Francisco and grew up there. It all began at the tender age of six when her dad, Monty, took some photos of his young daughter. The photos allowed her to get some modeling gigs which then lead to television commercials. After a guest spot on The Wonder Years as a literal "dream girl" she moved on to movies.

  

• She landed a role in The Crush, a Fatal Attraction for teenagers in which she portrayed a disturbed young lady obsessed with an older man. The nasty little role didn't impress the critical establishment but it wowed its target audience of teenagers. In fact, the role won her the 1994 MTV Movie Awards for "Best Villain" and "Breakthrough Performance". It is interesting to note that during the filming of The Crush, Alicia became an emancipated minor in order to get around child labor laws which would have interfered with her working hours. She was a dedicated actress from early on.

  

• The Crush also caught the attention of Aerosmyth, who hired her to appear in a string of their music videos. The first of them, "Cryin'" was voted the number one video of all time on MTV. Silverstone was definitely a hit with the MTV crowd, but larger commercial success had still eluded her. That all changed when she landed the role of Cher in Amy Heckerling's Clueless. The Cher character was the antithesis of her role in The Crush. This time round Silverstone was a naive yet endearing girl from Beverly Hills in search of love in the nineties. The film was a huge sleeper hit at the box office and wowed both audiences and critics alike. It also demonstrated Alicia's strength and bankability.

• Star Sign: Sun in Libra, Moon in Pisces
• Education: High school graduate equivalency diploma
• Quote:" Like when I'm in the bathroom looking at my toilet paper,I'm like WOW That's toilet paper?I don't know if we appreciate how much we have. "
  

• Alicia's parents are named Monty and Didi, and she has a brother David. After a successful career as a child model and numerous appearances on Tv commercials(dominoes Pizzas, etc), Alicia won a brief role in The Wonder Years as Fred Savage's love interest. Alicia also appeared as "the tough chick in boots" in three Aerosmith music videos.

• Following The Crush, she appeared in the TV movie Cool And The Crazy (1994), True Crime (1995), Le Nouveau Monde (1995), and co-starred with Jeff Goldblum in the thriller Hideaway (1995) in which she played Regina, the target of a back-from-the-dead psycho stalker who is psychically linked to her father. But she is best known for her role in Clueless (1995) and the phrase "As if !".

  

• She was hailed as the woman of the hour, and branded the spokeswoman for an emerging young generation. She signed a deal with Columbia Tristar worth 10 million and got the coveted role of Batgirl in the Batman franchise. Also, as part of the package, she got a three-year first-look deal for her own production company, First Kiss Productions. The first film released by First Kiss was Excess Baggage. That was when things began to go wrong. In the months leading up to the production of Batman and Robin, reports began to emerge of Alicia’s weight problem. The actress had put on a lot of weight and had to lose it before production could begin. She soon took to wearing extravagant and weird fashions, and was made fun of in the press. To make matters worse, Excess Baggage bombed at the box office and became an object of mockery. However what may have really done her in, was the emerging new generation of young actors. Along came Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar, and suddenly Alicia Silverstone became old news. Her appearance in question, and her box office clout plummeting, things went from bad to worse for the promising young star. However Alicia is still young and still has plenty of time to mount a come back. There is a definite market for young Hollywood talent now, one which she helped to define. With some new projects on the way, it is quite possible that she will be able to weather the storm and come out the better for it.

04/28/00