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Chloe Sevigny
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Clothes make this girl. She walks across a posh hotel lobby in denim hot pants. It's impossible not to be overwhelmed by her funky sense of style.
Chloé Sevigny is not the girl next door. She's the girl in the next booth of the Manhattan restaurant that nobody else can get into. A real downtown beauty. Chiseled features. Innocent face. Ample nose.
Her look is entirely her own. Maybe that's why movie audiences can't take their eyes off her.
Sevigny's Boys Don't Cry character, Lana Tindel, is an on-screen innocent audiences have seen before. It's just that they've never seen it played by Sevigny. What makes Lana unique is Sevigny's own self-innocence. But as Lana Tindel falls for the new boy, a gender-bending Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank) in her rural town, the result is sweet but harrowing drama.
Watch Sevigny's large eyes, and the emotions just roll across her face. You understand when she tells you that she never planned to become an actress. More importantly, you realize why she's emerged as one of American film's great young talents: She is an original.
"Acting is art," Sevigny says, curled up in Toronto hotel room chair. "It is. But I don't know if it's very fulfilling for me. I don't really like to watch my movies, and I feel like you should be able to watch something you've done and appreciate it and be proud of it. I mean, that's ego and insecurities. Its just a risk, making a movie. You have no control. At least from my type of actress and my level of fame."
Sevigny laughs at compliments. She's surprised at her growing accolades. She insists to her publicist and anyone else who walks by that she's not that good an actress either. In a business fueled by egoism, Sevigny is unashamedly self-effacing.
"Maybe I don't know what it all means," she says. "I guess I'm just meaning girls at the same level I'm at. I've worked with bigger stars, and the control they have on the set is frightening. But I'm willing to give myself over to the director and trust in them. That's why I work with the ones I do. I don't really fight. I believe in their cause and their vision, and so I fight for them and with them and not against them."
Sevigny is surprised at the acclaim she's received this year: Golden Globes, Screen Actor's Guild and the Oscar nomination. She's probably the only one.
"I guess I want to be an artist, but I won't admit that I'm not," she says, laughing. "So I try to work with great artists."
Already Sevigny has an impressive film bio. She chose to make her film debut in 1995's tough, controversial Kids. In it, she played an HIV-positive teen searching for the boy who infected her. She was discovered almost by accident by Kids screenwriter Harmony Korine and director Larry Clark. She met her on-again-off-again boyfriend Korine while hanging out in Washington Park some years ago. Their personal relationship led to a collaboration on the avant-garde film Gummo.
Then there were the noirish Palmetto and Whit Stillman's sly comedy The Last Days of Disco. Her 1999 trio of films -- Boys Don't Cry, julien donkey-boy and A Map of the World -- kept her on art house screens regularly.
Most recently, Sevigny played the innocent secretary for Wall Street killer Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) in American Psycho. She played a teen-age devil worshipper in Rob Urbinali's off-Broadway play Hazelwood Jr. High.
Through it all, she's enjoyed brief spurts of modeling. She was hired as an intern at Sassy in the summer of 1992 because of her uncanny ability to spot trends. But she doesn't want to be the next Anna Wintour. Fashion would be too much of a responsibility.
So the steady film work has been a sweet reward for Sevigny, who has emphatically not been chasing Hollywood-like success.
There are no Hollywood blockbusters. At least not yet. Most of her films are low-budget affairs. Boys Don't Cry was a result of 16-hour days and six-day work weeks.
It was worth all the effort. The indie world is where Sevigny feels most comfortable. Not that she wouldn't bring her own sense of style to some mainstream movie.
"I'm a good actress, but not a great actress," she says, laughing. "I'm good. I can pass. A great actress is like, you know, Sissy Spacek, Gena Rowland, Lillian Gish and Mia Farrow. I don't know what kind of actress I am. Au natural? But I'm not Sarah Michelle Gellar. I think it's just the work I choose to do and not me."
Sevigny is the unofficial poster child for indie film cool. She never asked for the title. She insists that "nerdy girl" is a more appropriate tag. She still lives at home with her mother in Darien, Conn. Maybe the allure is that she's this potent mix of nerd and hipster rolled together into one slick package.
TV audiences got a glam-eye's view of Sevigny at the March 26 Oscars ceremony. She flashed all the particulars of a Hollywood starlet: perfectly plucked hair, sparkling necklace and a designer gown with a plunge that reached down to her toes. So Sevigny strutted for the paparazzi with Korine on her arm. She was a welcome burst of cinematic cool.
She didn't get a chance to give an acceptance speech. Then again, the self-effacing actress never expected she would be part of the Oscars 2000 scorecard as a Best Supporting Actress nominee for Boys Don't Cry.
On the Oscars red carpet, Sevigny looked like a modern-day Jean Harlow, a red-lipped Teutonic beauty who freezes men in their tracks with icy shot of glamour. Of course, she still has her share of detractors.
"I just read this article the other day about Boys Don't Cry, and they said 'Chloé Sevigny finally lives up to her billing,' " she says. "I can't stop thinking about it. I know I shouldn't let it affect me, but it's like a back-handed compliment."
Sevigny originally read for the part of Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry. Now it's impossible not to think of her as Lana. She also had to fight for that role, because Lana was offered to two other actresses. In hindsight, at least for the filmmakers, it's good thing the other actresses turned the part down.
"Sarah Polley gets all the parts before I do," Sevigny says. "They offered her Boys Don't Cry before me. They offer her everything. She's my big competition, and she's a better actress, as far as I'm concerned. I probably shouldn't be saying this."
Coolness can't be bought, manufactured or spin-doctored. It's inherent. It comes naturally. Sevigny proves it. Now, in the months after her Oscar attention, her career continues.
Hers is an enviable position. The reluctant model who appeared in fashion magazines is now an emerging actress with her own style sense.
Movie pundits know that Sevigny's Boy's Don't Cry recognition was no coincidence. Chances are there will be an acceptance speech or two in her future.
Film has become her scene. Wouldn't it be great if we all could live there? ©
