Alicia Silverstone
Alicia Silverstone (pronounced /əˈliːsiə ˈsɪlvɚstoʊn/; born October 4, 1976) is an American film and stage actress and former fashion model. She first came to widespread attention in music videos for Aerosmith, and is best recalled for her roles in Hollywood films such as Clueless (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997).
Silverstone was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Deirdre "Didi" (née Radford), a Scottish-born former flight attendant who worked for Pan Am, and Monty Silverstone, an English-born real-estate investor. Silverstone was raised in a "traditional Jewish household"; her father, a native of East London, is Jewish, and her mother converted to Conservative Judaism before marriage. Silverstone is the youngest of three children and also has a half-sister, London-based rock singer Kezi Silverstone, and a half-brother, David Silverstone, both from her father's previous marriage. Silverstone attended Crocker Middle School, then San Mateo High School but did not complete her high school studies. Silverstone visited England over a summer during childhood. When she was six, she began modeling and was subsequently cast in television commercials, the first being for Domino's Pizza. She acquired some early modeling and advertising work and was eventually cast as, "dream girl," "Jessica," on the episode Road Test of The Wonder Years.
Silverstone is noted for being an animal welfare and environmental activist. She also became a vegan in 1998 after attending an animal rights meeting. "I realized that I was the problem," she told InStyle Home, in spring 2007. "I was an animal lover who was eating animals." In 2004, Silverstone was voted, "Sexiest Female Vegetarian," by PETA. In 2007, Silverstone appeared nude in a print advertisement and 30-second commercial for PETA championing vegetarianism, and the TV spot was subsequently pulled from the Houston, Texas, market by Comcast Cable. Silverstone set up a sanctuary for rescued pets in Los Angeles.
Federal campaign contribution records also reveal that Silverstone contributed US$500 to Dennis Kucinich's 2004 Presidential campaign.
On May 23, 2007, Silverstone was a guest on ABC's The View. Moments before she entered, hosts Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck had a heated argument regarding the Iraq war. The video segment shows Silverstone entering and walking past Hasselbeck to greet the other hosts. Though the interview continued normally and featured easy conversation between Silverstone and Hasselbeck, Access Hollywood deemed the act a deliberate snub. Hasselbeck later revealed, on an episode of The View which aired September 19, 2007, that Silverstone called and apologized for the incident. Hasselbeck said that Silverstone never meant to be rude, but was simply nervous when she walked on the stage and believed that incident was wrongly perceived by the media.
