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.