After skyrocketing to stardom as the lovably shallow Cher in ‘Clueless’, Alicia Silverstone booked her next major film gig as Batgirl in 1997’s ‘Batman & Robin’.
But the media called her another name: Fatgirl.
Silverstone, who was 20 when Joel Schumacher’s critically panned comic-book adaptation hit theatres, recently reflected on the body-shaming she suffered early in her career in an interview with the Guardian published Saturday.
“They would make fun of my body when I was younger,” she said. “It was hurtful, but I knew they were wrong. I wasn’t confused. I knew that it was not right to make fun of someone’s body shape, that doesn’t seem like the right thing to be doing to a human.”
Some of the abuse the ‘American Woman’ star endured at the time involved tabloids printing the cruel nickname, as well as paparazzi shouting it while hunting her down for photos. She also recalled being asked about her bra size during an interview.
“That definitely wasn’t my [favourite] film-making experience,” she said of ‘Batman & Robin’, which also starred George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Uma Thurman.
“There were working circumstances that were less than [favourable] in terms of how things went down,” she said. “And no, I didn’t ... come out like a warrior but I would just walk away and go, OK, I know what that is and I’m done. I’m not going near that again.”
While Silverstone admitted she “stopped loving acting for a very long time” after starring in the Warner Bros project, she has since rediscovered her passion and can now be seen in the marriage comedy ‘Bad Therapy’, which launched digitally April 17.
Later in the interview, the animal-rights advocate shared her thoughts on the coronavirus crisis, which has halted production on two of her upcoming film projects. She’s been using her time during the pandemic to raise awareness about initiatives benefiting those on the front line.
“I’m an activist so I’m kind of used to suffering in terms of what is going in with the world with the climate and looking at the abuse that’s going on,” she said. “This is very surreal and different, but at the same time, I’ve been dealing with this for 25 years.”
