[[CANDIDS]] Con David Spade

[[CANDIDS]] Selma con extensiones y su novio en Beverly Hills

[[CANDIDS]] Con James Caan

[[CANDIDS]] Selma juega con su perro

[[INTERVIEWS]] Selma Blair: Women: Details

Selma Blair

After her deliciously sapphic role in Cruel Intentions, the smart and sexy Selma Blair became a teen-movie queen. But, as fans will soon find out, nothing matures an actress quicker than a pervy Todd Solondz script.

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Unless you live in Europe, where the censors are decidedly more open-minded, you'll probably never see the shot in Todd Solondz's Storytelling in which Selma Blair is bent over and violated against a wall. A few months ago, when the pervy director (Happiness) screened this delicate sequence for the Motion Picture Association of America, the ratings board insisted that he give the scene a little more of a Disney feeling. Solondz, in classic passive-aggressive fashion, put a big red square over the shot. Red square or not, Storytelling remains a Todd Solondz film, and Blair still appears full-frontal. Not to mention the line she's asked to scream repeatedly—a line, frankly, that we probably shouldn't print ("Fuck me, nigger"). "I don't think that scene is such a big deal," Blair says, from the Hollywood dog park where she's decided to spend a recent afternoon. She pauses to pet her one-eyed mutt, Wink. "I wonder if it will be."

In Storytelling, the 29-year-old actress plays a college student who, after having an affair with a cerebral-palsy afflictee, is eager to get it on with her African-American creative-writing professor, played by Robert Wisdom (Face/Off). "When we shot that scene," Blair says, "it was a really strange atmosphere. The apartment was really hot, Robert was sweating all over my back—it felt very real. But in a way, it was easy. I was naked, doing things that were horrifying, but I felt bold, like I had the permission to break taboos. It was refreshing."

Blair's speaking loud enough to be heard—regardless of topic—over the incessant yelping and woofing; she seems to enjoy it whenever a pack of canines crashes into her, scattering purses, leashes, and the usual bark-park flotsam and jetsam across the lawn. Fetching in short hair (cropped after Storytelling's pink dye nuked her chestnut locks), a jean jacket, and shell toes, she has an easy humor and blunt nature that suggest an actress who knows exactly where she stands; a kind of punk-rock princess, too girlie to be Natasha Lyonne, too savvy to be Sarah Michelle Gellar. Take, for instance, the 1999 teen romp Cruel Intentions, which found her swapping saliva with Buffy. Blair now regularly finds herself discussing the teenage-lesbian-fantasy smooch with legions of drooling fans. "There's a funny scene in Not Another Teen Movie that spoofs the kiss with this 70-year-old woman in my part," Blair says. "They even had the spit string like Sarah and I had. I thought it was pretty cool. I've become an in-joke." Blair's comic ease isn't lost on her colleagues. "Some actors can be a bit standoffish at first," says Jason Lee, who co-stars with Blair opposite Julia Stiles in this fall's A Guy Thing. "Not Selma. She'll say and do whatever she wants, regardless of who's in the room. It's admirable."

This month, Blair turns up again in The Sweetest Thing, which concerns a raunchy club hopper (Cameron Diaz) who turns to her girlfriends (Blair and Christina Applegate) for help trying to land Mr. Right. Apparently, the set was yet another lesbian-fantasy session. "They're pretty hot girls—I wouldn't mind romping around with those two," Blair says. "No, no, just kidding. We did what girls always do: We talked about guys, discussed penis size—if they're lucky, we say it's big."

Blair's childhood sounds like urban Jane Austen: She and her three older sisters—Mimi, Katie, and Lizzie—were raised in Southfield, Michigan, by their mother, whom Blair describes as a "damn sexy" federal judge. After graduating with a fine-arts degree from the University of Michigan, she took off for New York, thinking she'd be a photographer or an actress, whichever worked out. In the short term, what worked out was broke, waiting tables, and sleeping at the Salvation Army. "I was so poor I had to choose between beer and a sandwich for lunch," Blair says. "And I'd think, hmmm...beer is cheaper, and I'll get a buzz, so beer it is." Fortunately, an agent caught her in an acting class and Blair was able to upgrade her diet. Solondz had a similar reaction: "Selma really popped out at me when I met her," the director says. "She makes the text richer than you thought it would be."

Though Blair posed nude for student painters in art school, when asked about the art of onscreen exposure, she tends to draw attention to her stick-thin frame and distinct lack of boobage. Like any smart woman, she can turn what could have been a physical liability (in some eyes, at least) into a charming mea culpa. "I'm a tomboy!" she screams at her chest. "No, I'm kidding. But I think my body type is probably a little odd to see on screen. I don't have that curvy figure, and no implants. I don't get asked much to do your typical sexy nude stuff because the American public wouldn't know what to make of me."

At least Hollywood hasn't sucked all the humor out of her, like it does to certain young actresses (insert mental picture of Leelee Sobieski reading her 9-11 prose poetry on Leno). When offered an opportunity to share any final thoughts, Blair ends the afternoon with her own pomo haiku: "If your readers ever want to see me, I'm stripping Monday nights at Crazy Girls in Hollywood and I go by the name of Lucky," she says with mock earnestness. "You'd hardly recognize me! And if they have the teen crowd in, I wear my Manchester Prep costume from Cruel Intentions, and I take it all off."

[[CANDIDS]] Saliendo de la Premiere de "La Cosa Más Dulce"

[[INTERVIEW]] Selma Blair: In storytelling she breaks every Taboo in the book

SELMA BLAIR: Are we recording?

CAMERON DIAZ: The recorder's on. but whether or not it's recording is another thing. [laughs] No. We're fine. So let's talk about your new movie, Storytelling. First question: What's up with the pink hair?

SB: [laughs] Todd [Solondz, the film's director] completely stripped me of things that were Selma. He was like, "No giggles, no smiles, and you have to dye your hair pink or blue to make it different." It was great because wardrobe informs so much for me. Like in Legally Blonde, I put on a pair of pearls and a big diamond ring and automatically I'm Vivian Kensington. So with Todd, I'm stripped of my normal hair, something that makes me feel so grounded, and he gives me a cotton-candy head and takes my clothes off. Literally. [both laugh]

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CD: But watching your character I was completely blown away. I couldn't take my eyes off you. I was looking for the signs of what I know of you as an actor, and I didn't see any of it. It was so raw and so real.

SB: Oh, thank you. [My character] Vi actually reminded me of your Lotte [the character Diaz played in Being John Malkovich, 1999]. I really got to be someone that no one thinks of me as. I got into that pink hair, I took my clothes off, and I just played this flawed girl. I wasn't really aware of acting because Todd's writing is just so clear that it was so comfortable. Everyone's like, "Weren't you uncomfortable doing these really controversial things?" But it felt more real to me than trying to fit a funny in--you know, how I'll try to get a laugh. This was a breath of fresh air.

CD: Well, it paid off. And there are moments where you do put a funny in. That's my Selma coming through! [both laugh] As I was watching it, I felt like I was watching a real person. I saw real emotions--an actual person's emotions and what that person was going through.

SB: It was interesting to me that in the short time that we see my character, even though the part of the movie I'm in is titled "Fiction," what we see is so real in its description of what we do to feel comfortable in sex and relationships.

CD: You know why? Because Todd's a storyteller, and he did a movie called Storytelling. And the characters were storytellers themselves. Your part of the film talked about how storytellers who tell fiction come to find their fiction.

SB: I wish I had you on set to explain this whole thing to me.

CD: Then the "Non-Fiction" part of the film is the documentary filmmaker, whose story of nonfiction is so bizarre--

SB: --that it seems like fiction.

CD: Exactly. Nonfiction doesn't seem to be anything more than fiction. So even if you watch a documentary, whatever you take out of it becomes fiction as soon as you go to tell the story again. It's sort of like history is fictional.

SB: Wow. [both laugh]

CD: That's not where I meant to go with that! You know, maybe we shouldn't have dropped those 'shrooms! [both laugh] But seriously. I thought it was amazing. And, you know, I finally saw Legally Blonde on Friday.

SB: It's cute, isn't it? And so different from Storytelling. Did you see it with friends?

CD: I saw it with my 17-year-old niece, and the whole way through it she was saying, "Oh my God! This is so cute! Reese Witherspoon is my favorite actress!" I was like, "Thanks a lot!" [both laugh] But seeing you m that movie, and in Storytelling, and having worked with you on The Sweetest Thing [to be released this spring], I'm like, "You are the most fearless."

SB: You're only saying that because you know what a coward I am, so you know how hard it is for me to take the kind of role I took in Stotytelling.

CD: But you're not a coward. You're very courageous, because you are afraid, and yet you still do it. I think it's amazing. I want you to do more movies like Storytelling.

SB: I want to do more movies like Storytelling. I want to do more movies that have directors and writers who really believe in what they're doing, so I can be fearless. Then it's not just me telling their story--it's not me at all; I become someone else. And that's the best part of being an actor.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

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By Cameron Diaz "Selma Blair: In storytelling she breaks every Taboo in the book". Interview. . FindArticles.com. 09 Oct. 2008. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1285/is_1_32/ai_82352413

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