'''Alicia Silverstone''' (born October 4, 1976) is an American actress and former fashion model. She first came to widespread attention in music videos for Aerosmith and later starred in Hollywood films such as ''
Clueless'' and ''
Batman & Robin''.
Biography
Early life
Silverstone was born in San Francisco, California, to Monty Silverstone, a British-born Jewish real-estate investor, and Didi Radford, a Scottish-born former flight attendant who converted to Judaism upon marrying Silverstone's father. She was raised in Hillsborough, California. Alicia is the youngest of Monty and Didi's three children but she also has a half-sister, London rock singer Kezi Silverstone, and a half-brother, David Silverstone, from Monty's previous marriage. When Alicia was six, Monty took some photos of his young daughter. The photos allowed her to get some modeling gigs which then led to television commercials (the first being for Domino's Pizza).
Alicia later attended San Mateo High School in San Mateo, California where she was a cheerleader. During this time she acquired some early modelling and advertising work and eventually got the part of the 'dream girl' on American TV series ''The Wonder Years''.''
Acting career
She won a leading part in the 1993 movie ''
The Crush'', playing a girl who sets out to ruin an older man after her teenage crush is spurned, for which she won two awards at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards. Silverstone actually became legally emancipated at the age of 15 in order to work the hours required for the shooting schedule of ''
The Crush''.
She went on to star in three Aerosmith music videos known as the Cryamazy trilogy, entitled "Cryin," "Crazy," and "Amazing," which were hugely successful both for the band and Silverstone, making her a household name (and also the nickname, "the Aerosmith chick"). Around this period, Silverstone was offered the role of Valerie Malone, on ''Beverly Hills 90210''. After she turned it down, the role went to Tiffani Thiessen.
After ''
Clueless'' became a huge sleeper hit and critical darling during the summer of 1995, Silverstone was hailed as the woman of the hour, and branded the spokeswoman for an emerging young generation. As a result, she was able to sign a deal with Columbia-TriStar worth $10 million. As part of the package, she got a three-year first-look deal for her own production company, ''First Kiss Productions''.
The first movie to be released by ''First Kiss Productions'' was a 1997 dark comedy called ''
Excess Baggage''. ''
Excess Baggage'', a movie in which Silverstone played a chain smoking, underage drinking, rich brat, who fakes her own kidnapping in
