7 de abril de 2004

[[PHOTOCALLS]] Camera given to: Selma Blair


PERIODICAL GUIDE On the Prague set of the horror thriller ''Hellboy'' (April 2004), Blair shows off a magazine that keeps her busy during downtime


Photograph by Selma Blair

2 de abril de 2004

[[INTERVIEWS]] Selma Blair of "Hellboy"



By Sean Chavel in Los Angeles / Intro by Thomas Chau

Selma Blair is known to be a great person to interview and when she sits in a room of reporters, she becomes every publicist's nightmare by talking about anything and everything.

But you would probably need someone with a great sense of humor to star in such a wickedly dark action comedy such as "Hellboy." Selma stars as Liz Sherman, a woman with the powers to start fires, in Guillermo del Toro's film adaptation of Hellboy comic books. Liz is the object of Hellboy's affection but distances herself from Hellboy as well as humans, as she constantly struggles to figure out which world she belongs to.

Selma recently talked to Cinema Confidential about her role in "Hellboy" and below is what she had to say.

Q: So Selma, after winning the MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss with Sarah Michelle Gellar, do you think you'll get a nomination this time for your kiss with Hellboy?

SELMA: I don't think kissing a devil man is racy enough for MTV. I think you have to do something more outrageous to get an MTV best kiss. I think it was a very hot kiss. Maybe a nomination. I think we didn't have enough tongue for an MTV kiss.

Q: Was there tongue?

SELMA: So strange, but I... There was tongue! I tongued Hellboy! It was so gross looking back. We didn't know and Guillermo was like, 'What are you two doing?,' and we're like, 'We're making out.' He's like, 'Stop!' It was just so horrifying. In the moment, we're really in love. It's a kiss. You go for it. But you have the teeth and the blaaahh.

Q: Was it weird kissing the fake tongue?

SELMA: Yeah, they did an amazing job with that make-up. The tongue was tongue colored. This is a very important conversation, make sure you get all of this. No, his tongue was all wrong. It was amazing, I don't know. We did a couple takes with a little bit more MTV style and then I think Guillermo's like, 'Yeah, you can just chill. This is not necessary.' And we're like, 'Okay, thanks. This is awfully awkward.' But he's sexy. I thought Hellboy was incredible sexy.

Q: How was the atmosphere on set, especially with someone like Guillermo?

SELMA: I have never felt so at home on a movie set. I love Guillermo so much. I think everyone that meets or speaks to Guillermo has to love him. He's so passionate and loving and generous and just, he's just, God for this type of movie, I think. He was the most mellow man on set too because I think he was so confident that he could do everything and he'd been working on this movie, such a labor of love, for so long, he comes in so prepared, his sketches are leaking out. His journals are like the Sistine Chapel. It's just amazing what he does that is just scrap paper that gets thrown away at the end of the day that would be considered my greatest achievement. He's amazing.

Q: Did you spend any time in Prague while filming?

SELMA: I did. I was offset, I actually had like a month in there where I was left to my own devices. Kind of on-call and not being used but not able to go home. Prague is gorgeous. Incredible place to visit, so beautiful in the spring time and one of the darkest, loneliest places I have ever been. And, I probably smoked four packs of cigarettes a day hoping for the good lord to take me away. It was so spooky, really spooky. The people I met there can just drink a hell of a lot. I had joined them on a couple of instances. I don't make it a habit to ever drink around work time just so you always feel fresh and I have dark circles enough to combat.

Q: The movie deals with questions of what makes someone "human" and so how do you feel your character fits in that, even though she's physically more human than Hellboy?

SELMA: Liz looks normal. She just obviously has a tortured past, a tortured mind, doesn't know how to make a step in either direction, embrace the freak world, but she doesn't feel like she even has enough control. And she sees [Agent] John Meyers, who's a real boy close to her age. This is my opportunity to be normal but she's not. She only feels comfortable with Hellboy, but she doesn't want to live in that world and, yeah, I think she's really torn because she's both worlds where as Hellboy is obviously just one.

Q: Did you ever relate to Liz in regards to "not fitting in?"

SELMA: I think we all feel like misfits when we open our mouth sometimes, you know? My mother dressed me always very conservatively. Preppy's your best best and was very... Definitely my outer appearance was always very conservative and very preppy and classic and I'd open my mouth and it was just a nightmare. It was more off-putting than if I would have just put a sign on saying “I'm a freak.” But my sensibility is always very much towards the classic and the beautiful and then there'll be a truck driver that comes out so I understand kind of not fitting in.

Q: Is there a plan for a sequel?

SELMA: Mmm, hmmm. We'll see how it does, I guess. I mean, I hope it does well.

Q: Would you go back to that world?

SELMA: Yes. I'm much better equipped.

Q: Are you ready for comic book geeks to start worshipping you?

SELMA: I'm ready. I'm waiting. I went to one of these comic book conventions and they could care less about me. It was all about Ron because he has such a following with them. And to be Hellboy, who's gonna care about Liz Sherman when they have Hellboy there?

Q: You got married recently in January so how has that changed you?

SELMA: I think getting married gave me a focus. It gave me a focus and direction I want to have in my life. And I think having another person that you make such a purposeful bond with has given me the opportunity to see how that can be with all the other aspects of my life. I think it's coming along very nicely, having kind of a mirror, choosing to have a person in your life all the time, you can see your own behavior and appreciate there's. I think I've become a lot more mellow and accepting. I was an incredible snob before I met him and he just doesn't have any room for that behavior. He doesn't believe in that at all. He is joyous, loving and free and I would have laughed at that.

"Hellboy" opens in theaters April 2nd.

18 de febrero de 2004

[[INTERVIEWS]] Selma Blair: Women: Details

Selma Blair

The actress plays with fire in Hellboy, but she's really just an animal lover at heart. Have you met her one-eyed dog, Wink?

Selma Blair has a yippy little one-eyed dog she named Wink, which gives you an idea of her sense of humor. When strangers stop and ask how Wink lost her eye, Blair likes to make up stories just to mess with their heads. On this particular afternoon a man in a striped shirt puts the question to her outside a West Hollywood café, and Blair makes a sad face. "Actually," she tells him, "Lou Reed put it out with a cigarette." (Man, shocked: "Oh, my God, I hate him." Blair, shrugging: "I know, it was an accident, but it's still bad.") When a middle-aged woman coochie-coos Wink and asks, "Is she a puppy?" Blair answers flatly, "No, she's probably going to die soon, in fact." But she isn't a liar, really. She just likes to keep things interesting.

Blair, who's 31 and petite with a wiry gymnast's body, is kind of manic at the moment, having just polished off a meringue and a large Diet Coke. Caffeine and sugar do this to her, she says, get her pinballing from one sarcastic joke or neurotic, Ally McBeal-y riff to another, disabling whatever inhibition she may possess. Careerwise, too, she tends to ricochet in unpredictable directions, once playing an innocent virgin who gets a lesson in French kissing from Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cruel Intentions, then an icy battle-ax in Legally Blonde, and then an emotionally fragile student who does unspeakably nasty things with her literature professor in Todd Solondz's controversial Storytelling. A less adventurous, America's-sweetheart-type résumé might have made her a bigger star. (Even Solondz, who's a major Blair booster, calls some of her movies "regrettable.") But safe isn't what Blair is about. Safe is for Barbies.

Now comes Hellboy, a big-budget adaptation of a cult comic book about a demon turned do-gooder and the band of freaks who help him destroy evil. Blair plays the doomy heroine Liz Sherman, who has pyrotechnic powers she can't fully control. It's a welcome chance for Blair to get her freak on, which is really what she does best. "She's tragically flawed," Blair says of her character. "When she was young, she killed her family by accident—as you do when you're young. That's a lot to bear. She was fucked. It really gets me."

A guy with a shaved head appears from around the corner, gives Blair a kiss with a generous helping of tongue, tells her "I'm a huge fan of your work," and walks off. Blair smiles coyly. "See how friendly I am with my fans?" she says. The guy is her fiancé, actor Ahmet Zappa. The two plan to get married later this year, but right now she's temporarily shacked up with a friend of Zappa's while her apartment is being renovated. "I got a new bed today: a Dux," Blair says. "Ahmet has a Tempur-Pedic." She gasps in mock horror. "Look at me, going on about my private life. Why? Why? This is private!"

Wink tugs Blair to a park across the street from the café and begins to look for a primo spot to do some Winky business. Watching this, Blair cocks her head. "Are you as mesmerized by Wink's tushy-hole as I am?" she asks. "It's a bummer, because I'll take her for a walk and I'll find that all I'm looking at is her flipping Eye of Mordor. The fiery eye. I get so transfixed, and I think, "This walk was a washout. I got nothing spiritually out of it.'" She sighs heavily. "I thought getting a dog would uplift me, but all I can do is watch her get ready to lay a deuce."

Blair steers Wink toward the swing set and commandeers a ride, and the conversation turns to the topic of homemade sex tapes. Someone gave her a copy of the Paris Hilton romp, she says, but she wouldn't play it. "I'm not one with incredible morals or ethics," she says, "but I would just feel yucky watching it. And I'm not attracted to either of them, so it wasn't like, Wow."

One swing over, a fat guy in a grease-stained T-shirt is pushing a pissed-off-looking 2-year-old. Blair decides to bring him in on this. "Would you be so embarrassed if a sex tape came out of you publicly?" she asks.

His eyes bug out. "A what?"

"A sex tape," Blair repeats. "Like the Pamela Anderson–Tommy Lee thing or something. I would die. I can't even fathom it. I think you're foolish to make one, and if you make one you've got to burn it. Like, after the champagne's worn off, you have to realize it's not a good idea to make something like that. Ever."

Swing Dad clearly doesn't know what to make of Blair. But the director of Hellboy, Guillermo del Toro, says he's enchanted by her restless, irrepressible mind. "I call her Monkey Brain," he says. "She likes outrageous humor. She is, in many ways, one of the boys. But if you have a more personal chat with her, you find out she also has a lot of depth. She's lived a very full life."

Ah, yes, her life: growing up in Michigan, living through some hinted-at but unspecified family drama, moving to New York to become a photographer, struggling to the point where she was practically living in the streets before being spotted by a talent agent. Intimations of darker forces hiding behind the kooky antics. Maybe Blair could shed a little light on this?

"Here's the thing," she says, rolling her eyes. "I was born in Michigan and ... You know, it's boring. Who cares? Who cares who I was, because I'm gonna be—" She throws her arms wide with a dramatic flourish. "I'm gonna be Marilyn Monroe! Write that! Print it!"

Blair looks around for Zappa, who is supposed to pick her up in a few minutes. "I want to wrap this up, because I keep talking and I'm manic and it's making me sick," she says. She looks down at the ground, lets out a nervous giggle. "I hope you're one of the ones that gets me a little bit. I want you to like me so that when I read this I don't get sad and drink too much that night. Some people believe everything I'm saying. I mean, there's truth to it. It's not like I'm a liar. But it makes me laugh. I'm fun, right? I'm superfun! Would you pay money to see me in a movie now?"

Yes, we say—because she obviously could stand to hear it but also because it is the truth. We gladly would.

And, in a minute, after a quick hug, Blair has skipped off, her one-eyed dog tucked under her arm, and suddenly the park seems quiet and dull.



Read More http://www.details.com/celebrities-entertainment/women/200402/selma-blair?currentPage=3#ixzz0zui5H2ek





2 de febrero de 2004

[[NEWS]] Selma Blair Weds a Zappa

Selma Blair has officially been Zappa'd.

The Legally Blonde actress and rock-scion beau Ahmet Zappa have capped their six-month whirlwind romance with a walk down the aisle.

The couple swapped vows at Carrie Fisher's Beverly Hills home on January 24. The nuptials were originally meant to take place at the Ritz-Carlton in nearby Marina Del Rey, but the actress and her rocker fianc? changed locations at the last minute.

On hand to witness the traditional Jewish ceremony were a small circle of family and friends, including Zappa's sister, Moon Unit, and brother, Dweezil, who was accompanied by gal-pal and cohost of the Food Network TV show Dweezil and Lisa, Lisa Loeb.

According to People magazine, the bride wore a white satin tailor-made Karl Lagerfeld gown while the groom wore a black suit.

For the reception, Blair changed into a black version of the same dress as the 70-plus guests danced to disco tunes and dined on grilled salmon and a three-layer coconut wedding cake.

It's the first marriage for both. Blair was previously linked to Rushmore star Jason Schwartzman, while Zappa was tied to Charmed thesp Rose McGowan.

The engagement was first announced on the Friendster Website on September 19 by Zappa himself, who wrote, "I'm getting married...she said yes. I'm so happy. Love az."

Zappa's dabbled in show biz, singing on Dweezil's albums and appearing as a judge on Star Search and a panelist on Hollywood Squares. He's also guest-starred on MTV's now-defunct New Tom Green Show, as well as The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, Roseanne and Growing Pains. And he starred in the 1990 movie Pump Up the Volume.

Blair's claim to fame was the title role on the WB's short-lived series Zoe?, originally called Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane. She auditioned for the TV role of Buffy the Vampire Slayer but lost out to Sarah Michelle Gellar. The two actresses later swapped an infamous wet and sloppy one in the film Cruel Intentions.

She most recently starred in the comedies A Guy Thing and Legally Blonde. Blair has two movies in the pipeline for 2004. In April she'll star in the feature-film adaptation of the comic-book character Hellboy, about the son of Satan produced in a Nazi experiment gone wrong, who's later raised to do good by Americans. Blair stars as Liz Sherman, a pyrokinetic love interest for the bad boy turned good. She's also set to appear in the family dramedy Hating Her opposite Johnny Knoxville, but that film doesn't have a release date yet.