Hollywood Deep

What ever happened to Alicia Silverstone? The young starlet who shot to the top of the entertainment world in the mid 90’s. Her movies “Clueless” and “The Crush”, made her a very young and beautiful box office darling, that had Hollywood at her feet. She was Lindsay Lohan when Lindsay was in grade school, she was Paris Hilton before Paris had her first sip of a frozen margarita. After those two movies she was the hottest young thing running around Hollywood. She was chased around by the paparazzi, and was a regular headline for the National Enquirer. Then she disappeared, she made a couple of bad movies and then some bad TV, and she was gone. No more paparazzi, no more sexy photo shoots, no more funny stories about her drunken nights. Fake rehab wasn’t big for starlets back then, or else I’m sure she would have been checking in and out of Wonderland, Promises, and Cirque Lodge. We haven’t seen her do anything in the last 5 years at least. Now she’s back in a 30 second ad for PETA (not sure exactly what it stands for and I don’t feel like looking it up), something to prevent cruelty to animals. PETA has been known for provocative ads and publicity stunts to draw attention to their cause.

I had the pleasure of working with Alicia way back when in the 90’s. It was after she had become a hot young star, on the movie “Batman and Robin”, she played Batgirl. When I say she was Lindsay before Lindsay, I saw it every day. She would drag her ass into work every morning after a full night of partying in Hollywood, and we would have piece her together every day, to get her ready to work. She would literally sleep in the chair as they did her hair and make up. Then they would stretch that latex suit onto her. It would take 2 or 3 costumers to get her into that thing, and She’d be reading the National Enquirer out loud about her exploits to anyone who would listen. Then we would load her into a golf cart and I would physically carry her to the set. She would put her arm around my shoulders as if she couldn’t walk, and I would deliver her right to her mark, every day. She hated the Batgirl suit, it was skin tight and it was hard to move around in. We hated to let her get out of the costume, because it was so hard to get her to put it on. So unless she had more then an hour break she would keep it on, so she was aways uncomfortable and tired. She was sweet though, she wasn’t one of those miserable stars who felt like she had to make everyone else miserable. She would constantly thank me for looking out for her, and jump into my golf cart and take a quick nap between shots. She would just ride around with me on the backlot at Universal Studios, sleeping. It was very surreal for a young production person, I would have Batgirl in full costume, riding around with me half asleep. My biggest worry was not to let her fall out when I made turns. She was fun, maybe not the most professional person to work with, but pleasant to be around. It did get to a point when everyone was fed up with her and, the producers wrote her out of a lot of scenes. She was just going through the motions at the end of the shoot and she didn’t care. Her performance in “Batman and Robin” did a lot to ruin her career. Not only was the movie bad, and she was bad in it, but the stories of her being unprofessional and difficult, got out. Back then, if you were difficult you didn’t work, the studios wouldn’t risk the big money on her anymore. It’s a little different in todays Hollywood. Although Lindsay will go through some of this, when she is ready to work again some studio will take a chance on her. Linds should look at Alicia as an example of how all the stardom can just go away.

Another thing I remember about Alicia was that she was always hungry. One of the reason was, because the skin tight Batgirl costumes had to be made at the beginning of a long production schedule, so she couldn’t gain any weight. The suit literally was custom fit to her body, to the inch, and had to be stretched onto her. So she was constantly on a diet, and the producers had forbidden her to eat while on set, because she had gained a few inches, and the suits were getting too tight. As we became friends she would ask me to sneak her food, mostly chocolate bars and chips. One day she jumped into the golf cart and saw a roast beef sandwich I had made for myself because I missed lunch. She looked at it like she had never seen one before. After talking about the sandwich for a while, I finally gave it to her, and she gobbled it down like she had never eaten before. After that she couldn’t get enough roast beef. Every day she was asking the craft service guy to sneak her 2, 3, 4 sandwiches, and had them hidden everywhere. She always kept one in my golf cart. The last month or so of the show, she was eating roast beef like crazy, and the Batgirl costume stopped fitting. The costumers had to finally make major renovations to the suit, in the final month of shooting, to make it fit. The producers and the costume people were pissed, she could care less, she loved roast beef.

In the PETA ad, she does say that she wasn’t always a vegetarian. I can attest to that, she was addicted to roast beef sandwiches in the 90’s.

Alicia does look great in the ad, I don’t think her body was airbrushed for the photo or the spot. She has gotten herself back into very good shape since then. I’m not sure about all this animal fanatic stuff, but it’s nice to see her working…and naked.
…Totally DEEP!

Alicia Silverstone in her heyday, mid 90’s

Alicia Silverstone’s PETA ad

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