Selma Blair has shone in dozens of films, inhabiting a gamut of characters from the frothy to the seedy. Now she's not only a leading lady — she's got her own action figure. By Michael Walker
Selma Blair has Charlotte Rampling's eyes, Dorothy Parker's precision-strike wit, and sufficient acting chops to blow better-known actresses off the screen with a toss of her bangs. Having shone in all manner of movies, from lightweight fare like Legally Blonde, The Sweetest Thing, and Cruel Intentions (in which she famously twisted tongues with Sarah Michelle Gellar) to darker indie films like Kill Me Later and Todd Solondz's Storytelling, the 36-year-old native of the Detroit suburbs has lately been trading up her character-actress cred for a fatter slice of the cultural pie.
"Part of me would love to have been a leading lady, because there's a lot of glamour that goes with that, and a lot of applause," she says, nursing a coffee in a West Hollywood patisserie. "But I've been very blessed. I'm not one of these girls who has to fit into a mold. I'm a working actress able to make choices based on characters rather than what I 'should' do for my career."
Blair, the youngest of four overachieving sisters, was born in Southfield, Michigan. "I was always kind of the storyteller," she recalls. "I remember being in the schoolyard when I was six, and I'd make up stories about how there was a huge carnival behind my house and then get in trouble because everyone wanted to come to see it. I had to become a recluse at a very young age so my story wouldn't be found out." After she graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan with a bachelor's degree in photography and a minor in English ("I was mostly writing about despair, grief, loneliness...the usual William Styron type of stuff," Blair laughs), a stint at the Stella Adler Studio in New York City nudged her into acting.
These days she does dark, light, and pretty much everything in between. She portrays a young woman avenging her rape and torture in the just-released thriller WAZ; in the upcoming The Poker House, she plays a prostitute who's the ultimate bad example for her 14-year-old daughter. In the franchise-building department, look for Blair to reprise her role as Liz Sherman, the pyrokinetic heroine of Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II. ("I have my own action figure," she says proudly.) With Molly Shannon, she'll star in the upcoming NBC comedy series Kath & Kim, based on the hit Australian television show about a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship. (For the record, Blair adores her real mother back in Ann Arbor, with whom she corresponds by handwritten notes.)
Divorced in 2006 after two years of marriage to Ahmet Zappa — "a lovely man" whose ring she still wears — Blair cops to bouts of melancholy despite the wind filling her sails as never before. A voracious reader, she finds comfort in books like Elliot Perlman's novel Seven Types of Ambiguity, in doting on her one-eyed Jack Russell mutt, Wink (adopted from a Los Angeles animal shelter), and in the prospect that her career may finally reach critical mass.
"I think it's been confusing for people because I haven't had a linear career," Blair says. "People who watch WAZ aren't going to see Legally Blonde. So even though I've done 27 movies, people think I've probably only done three. I'll always be indebted to Guillermo for giving me my shot at being a leading lady. It's such an unlikely leading lady, so maybe it makes sense that an unlikely leading lady would play it."
