Alicia Silverstone

Alicia Silverstone was born on October 4, 1976, in San Francisco, California, to British parents: her mother, Deirdre "Didi" Silverstone, a Scottish former Pan Am flight attendant, and her father, Monty Silverstone, an English real estate agent. She has two older siblings, a half-sister named Kezi and a brother named David. Silverstone grew up in Hillsborough, California, attended Crocker Middle School and San Mateo High School, and had a bat mitzvah ceremony, as her father was born into a Jewish family and her mother converted to Conservative Judaism before their marriage. She began modeling at age six and appeared in television commercials, starting with one for Domino's Pizza.

Silverstone's first credited acting role came in 1992 on The Wonder Years, and she made her film debut the following year in the erotic thriller The Crush, for which she became legally emancipated at fifteen to accommodate the shooting schedule. The role earned her two awards at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards: Best Breakthrough Performance and Best Villain. Director Marty Callner subsequently cast her in Aerosmith's music video for "Cryin'," and she went on to appear in two additional videos for the band, "Amazing" and "Crazy," which brought her widespread recognition. Filmmaker Amy Heckerling, having seen those videos, cast Silverstone as Cher Horowitz in the 1995 teen comedy Clueless, a role that became her most prominent film credit. The film's success led to a deal with Columbia-TriStar valued between eight and ten million dollars, along with a three-year first-look arrangement for her production company, First Kiss Productions. She received multiple honors for the performance, including Best Female Performance and Most Desirable Female at the 1996 MTV Movie Awards, as well as recognition from the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, the Kids' Choice Awards, the National Board of Review, and the American Comedy Awards.

Also in 1995, Silverstone appeared in three additional films: the French drama Le Nouveau monde, the Dean Koontz adaptation Hideaway, and the erotic thriller The Babysitter. In 1997, she portrayed Barbara Wilson, also known as Batgirl, in the superhero film Batman & Robin, which was budgeted at 160 million dollars and grossed 238 million dollars worldwide. The role earned her a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress as well as a Blimp Award at the Kids' Choice Awards. That same year, her production company released its first film, Excess Baggage, in which she played a neglected young woman who stages her own kidnapping. She followed that with the 1999 romantic comedy Blast from the Past, directed by Hugh Wilson and co-starring Brendan Fraser, Christopher Walken, and Sissy Spacek.

In the 2000s, Silverstone shifted toward smaller-scale projects in film and theater. She appeared in Kenneth Branagh's 2000 film adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost as the Princess of France, a role that required her to sing and dance. From 2001 to 2003, she executive produced and voiced the lead character, Sharon Spitz, in the Canadian animated series Braceface. In 2002, she made her Broadway debut in a stage adaptation of The Graduate, performing alongside Kathleen Turner and Jason Biggs at the Plymouth Theatre, with the production running through 2003. That same year she headlined the NBC series Miss Match, playing Los Angeles matrimonial attorney Kate Fox; the show was canceled after eleven episodes, though Silverstone received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series Musical or Comedy for her work on it.

Silverstone continued to appear in film throughout the mid-2000s, including Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004) and the comedy Beauty Shop (2005). She returned to Broadway as part of the cast of Time Stands Still, and later starred in The Performers, completing a Broadway career that spanned from 2002 to 2012. Outside of performance, Silverstone is a vegan who has endorsed PETA activities and authored two cookbooks, The Kind Diet, published in 2009, and The Kind Mama, published in 2014.