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She’s the face of indie cinema and a fashion icon from the red carpet to skating down the street. Here’s why she’ll always be our ‘it’ girl
Fame chose Chloe Sevigny. She was an 18-year-old that had ventured into the wide world on her own, leaving her home town of Darien, Connecticut, to rent an apartment in Brooklyn. Wandering through the streets in New York’s East Village, she was approached on two separate occasions – once by photographer, Nina Schultz, and then soon afterwards by Andrea Lee Linett, the fashion editor of Australian-founded, Manhattan-based teen magazine, Sassy. Both women were captured by Sevigny’s inherent sense of style, androgynous beauty and her long mane of blonde, flowing hair.
MAGAZINE GIRL
Linett encouraged her to intern at Sassy, which fitted with Sevigny’s early interest in fashion. Sevigny soon dabbled in modelling, where she graced fashion shoots for labels like X-girl, the design house of Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon. Sevigny also appeared in Sonic Youth’s Sugar Kane video.
Sevigny’s love affair with New York had been developing from a young age. Her father worked there and would take her to visit the city once a month. Sevigny relished opportunities to escape Darien, which she perceived to be too reliant on material possessions. “I would yell at my parents every night, ‘I can’t believe you! You’re bringing me up here! You guys are, like, so evil. Let’s move!’ I started to leave every weekend and go to Boston or up to Vermont, going all around New England. Then the VW bus I had broke down, so it was like, ‘Oh, I guess I’ll go into the city.’ When I started to hang out in New York, I met a bunch of kids in Washington Square Park. It seemed like the most diverse crowd was hanging out there. I would, like, stare at all these boys, and they all thought I had a staring problem, but it was just that I had never seen so many different kinds of people in my life.”
The wide-eyed Sevigny was drawn to the artistic skate culture that congregated in Washington Square Park during the day and New York’s chic Ludlow Street after sunset. She was too young to drink, but would hang out in night spots like Max Fish and play the pinball machines. Next door was the infamous Alleged Gallery, founded by skater and artist Aaron Rose. Sevigny would spend a lot of her spare time at Alleged, forming a friendship with the legendary photographer Terry Richardson.
INDIE LOVE
It wasn’t long before a romance with independent film-maker Harmony Korine lured Sevigny into acting. At age 18, Korine wrote a script called Kids, which was directed by the controversial Larry Clark in 1995. Alongside a young Rosario Dawson, Sevigny made her debut in a film centred around explicit drug use and disaffected teenage sex. As with most of Larry Clark’s material (like 2002’s Ken Park – also written by Korine), Kids has developed cult popularity since its release.
“Harmony really struck me,” explains Sevigny. “He was so driven and so confident. He would tell stories about how he was going to be a moviemaker. I remember him showing me the script for Ken Park. He got this horrible grade in school. They basically failed him for writing that screenplay. But I knew that he was driven and I was very attracted to that.”
DEBUT FAME
Sevigny’s face soon appeared on the cover of Interview magazine,
a publication co-founded by Andy Warhol. She caught the eye of writer Jay McInerney, who perceived her to be the new ‘it’ girl, following in the footsteps of icons such as Twiggy or Jerry Hall. As the author of the highly successful novel Bright Lights, Big City, and a member of the high-rolling, fast-living group of young novelists known as the ‘Brat Pack’ (which also included the genius of Bret Easton Ellis), McInerney had enough influence to write a seven-page feature about her in the New Yorker.
As Sevigny explains, she never honestly considered herself as an ‘it’ girl – journalists seemed to enjoy perpetuating this image. “Maybe its because we are all blonde and skinny, and we are picked from certain underground worlds. I was sort of brought out into the mainstream – sort of picked up off the street. I don’t think of myself as an ‘it’ girl... just a real girl. I’m not really happy with the way I look. I think I look very average. Very, you know, ‘plain Jane’. Very ‘all-American’. So I think I try and play it off by looking like a crazy Eastern European girl! By wearing an insane outfit, I don’t look so boring and normal,” laughs Sevigny.
GOLDEN REPUTATION
More independent film roles followed for Sevigny, whose beguiling presence suited the part of Steve Buscemi’s love interest in Trees Lounge in 1996. Korine cast her in his directorial debut, Gummo in 1997 and his following feature, Julien Donkey-Boy in 1999. Sevigny also scored a role alongside Woody Harrelson, Elisabeth Shue and Gina Gershon in 1998’s Palmetto.
Up until her breakthrough performance as Lana Tisdel in Boys Don’t Cry, which led to Sevigny’s Oscar Nomination in 1999, the increasingly recognisable actress had established herself as the ingenue of independent cinema. A born idealist, Sevigny admits that this was something she was striving for. “I wanted to do independent movies that were changing the face of cinema. My boyfriend [Harmony Korine], was very influential on me. I didn’t go to the movies that often. I watched a lot of movies at home – a lot of old movies – so I didn’t see that many commercial films. I think I was just being young and idealistic, but now that I’m older, I realise there’s movies for everybody. There’s room enough for everything and I love to go and watch a movie like Spider-Man and be wildly entertained for two hours. I’d love to be in a film like that. I just have to find that crossover somehow. I’ve been offered parts in romantic comedies as the ‘friend’ of the main star. I didn’t think it was right for me at the time, but I think I’m holding out and waiting for the right crossover project.”
Sevigny’s face certainly reached a wider audience in the wake of Boys Don’t Cry, but she has never travelled far into the mainstream, nor eluded films surrounded by controversy. She chose the role of Patrick Bateman’s secretary in the film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho in 2000. In a memorable scene, Sevigny sits innocently on the couch of Christian Bale’s psychotic protagonist, while he looms in the kitchen, engaging her in conversation while he labours over which implement he will use to end her life.
In 2003, Sevigny shocked movie goers in Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny. Censorship boards sounded alarm bells over a scene where Sevigny performs un-simulated fellatio on Gallo, who wrote, directed and starred in the film.
Sevigny chooses her words carefully when commenting on the jaw-dropping scene. “I really believed in Vincent as a film-maker. I’ve known him since I was 17 and he was 29. I dated him when I was a teenager, and I trusted him. It’s unfortunate that [The Brown Bunny] came out in such a conservative era. I was uncomfortable filming [the sex scene], but I don’t want to talk about it too much. You know, I put myself out there – I took a risk. I think there are lots of actresses who do risky things – maybe not as racy or graphic as Brown Bunny, but I have my own path,” explains the actress.
Criticism of The Brown Bunny has done little to stem the stream of film offers that Sevigny continues to receive. She landed a role in Lars Von Trier’s Dogville (2003) and his follow-up, Manderlay (2005). Coveted director Woody Allen asked her to be part of his film Melinda & Melinda (2004), and she also played Jessica Lange’s secretary in Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers (2005).
PRIME TIME
This year will see Sevigny appear in Zodiac, the latest film by David Fincher, director of Seven and Fight Club. She stars opposite Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. Sevigny will also be seen in Big Love, a TV series about a polygamic group of Mormon fundamentalists.
Although Sevigny might feel its time to dabble in more palatable cinema, her impact on independent film is indelible. If more actresses carried themselves with Sevigny’s elegance and bravery, then cinema might be a consistently enriching place to travel. Let’s hope Chloe Sevigny remains disaffected.
CHLOE’S ALLEGED VISITS
Like a lot of the young, artistic crowd that were drawn to New York
in the early ‘90s, Sevigny became a part of a skating subculture. Having little to do in her home of Darien, she found that skating was one way to pass the time. “I skated a bit. My brother had been a skater,” explains Sevigny. “We had two ramps in our backyard. I’d sit by the ramps and watch his friends skate. That’s when my infatuation with skaters began. I wasn’t very good at ramps, so I used to skate freestyle.”
In New York, the Alleged Gallery was a fusion of art and skating. Many of the skaters in Washington Square Park were also artists, like founder Aaron Rose, Mark Gonzales and Ed Templeton. Other young artists who frequented the building included Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze.
“I’m guessing I first stumbled upon Alleged in 1991 – although my timetable may be a little off. I remember sitting in the back room on Ludlow listening to Aaron [Rose] tell stories of cracked out celebs and rockstars from LA. It was very stimulating for a girl from Connecticut. I’m not sure who specifically brought me by [Alleged], I think everyone just sort of found their way there – an invisible force pulled you in,” says Sevigny.
WORDS Nick Milligan
PHOTOGRAPHY Kenneth Capello
