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WITH her tender, titillating presence in films and music videos, Alicia Silverstone elicits tingles in adolescent boys and dirty old men alike. Now, however, Silverstone has blossomed beyond her testosterone-laden core audience. In 1995, she put her naughty freshness to use in director Amy Heckerling'sClueless; Silverstone's performance as a good-hearted Beverly Hills teenager won critical and box-office kudos. She very quickly became Hollywood's next big thing and was signed to a $10 million deal with Columbia Pictures.
A San Francisco native, Silverstone launched her career at the age of six in a series of swimsuit snapshots taken by her father, a real estate investor. Those photos begat a steady stream of modeling gigs — including a Domino's TV commercial — and casting agents soon noticed her nubile charisma. After a guest shot on ABC's The Wonder Years, Silverstone signed up for her cinematic debut as a man-obsessed young woman in 1993's The Crush. Before filming began, Silverstone legally became an emancipated minor in order to evade child labor laws that would have restricted her working hours.
The Crush bombed with critics, but the Beavis and Butt-Head set found Silverstone's presence quite compelling. She then further agitated the country's hormone pool with a trio of wildly successful music videos for a group of prehistoric rockers called Aerosmith. Though she had captivated countless high school students, Silverstone herself dropped out of Beverly Hills High because of career demands. That's not to impart on her some sort of airhead status, as Silverstone has displayed considerable show-business savvy: she doesn't do nude scenes ("As if!"); she declined a role on post-Brenda Beverly Hills, 90210; she agreed to play Batgirl in Batman & Robin; and, as part of her Columbia package, she secured a three-year, non-exclusive first-look deal for her First Kiss Productions. In her debut release as producer, Excess Baggage, Silverstone played an attention-seeking teen who fakes her own kidnapping. More appealing was her turn opposite Brendan Fraser in the 1999 fish-out-of-water romantic comedy Blast From the Past.
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