When the general public discovered her in 1999, in
Sex Intentions,
by Roger Kumble, Selma Blair was a 26-year-old actress who, behind a youthful smile, went through a difficult childhood.
Years more than trying which the actress has decided to talk about in her memoirs, entitled
Mean Baby
.
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Juvenile alcoholism
Originally from Southfield, Michigan, Selma Blair was born in 1972 into a Jewish family.
The youngest of four sisters, the young girl seeks throughout her childhood to attract the attention of her mother.
“There is always a person who sticks to our skin, who knows our weaknesses and our neuroses and who cannot help but seek to kill us”, writes Selma Blair in her memoirs.
She suffers the remarks of the one she considers her model.
"These are the people who hurt us the most, because we care so much about what they think... For me, that person is my mother."
After her birth, for weeks, she is first called “Mean Baby” (mean baby, in French, and therefore the title of her book).
A character trait that she cultivated during her young years,
But it was at the age of 7 that everything changed, when she began to consume alcohol.
In her memoir, she says she uses the drink as a form of self-medication to cure her anxiety.
“I don't know if I would have survived childhood without alcohol,” she confides in an interview for
People magazine.
.
At 49, the actress evokes in particular what she felt during this long period of dependence.
“It was a huge comfort to me, a huge relief at first.
(…) I started very young and alcohol was a survival mechanism.”
In her book, she remembers precisely her first encounter with alcohol, during a family celebration for Easter.
“I got drunk that night.
I was very drunk.
Eventually, I was put in my sister Katie's bed.
In the morning, I did not remember how I had arrived there.
The actress says that in the early years she didn't get drunk, but just took a few quick sips whenever she started to feel anxious.
“In general, I was barely tipsy.
I became an expert alcoholic, adept at hiding my secret.”
Adolescence and early career
After high school, she entered the University of Michigan and graduated in 1994. At the same time, her addiction to alcohol intensified.
In her book, she confides in particular having suffered numerous sexual assaults, too drunk to react or remember every detail: "I left my body and other people entered it", she writes.
For
People
, she tells what happened during a trip during the famous
spring break
of his university.
After a long day of drinking, she finds herself alone with two boys.
“I don't know if the two raped me.
One of them certainly did,” she wrote.
“I made myself very small and silent and waited for it to end.
I wish I could say that what happened to me that night was an anomaly, but it's not.
I was raped, many times, because I was too drunk to say the words “Please.
Stop.”
Only this time was violent.
I came out of each attack remaining silent and ashamed”.
Her career began when she moved to New York, without the public suspecting her alcoholism.
She keeps this difficult part of her teenage life to herself, consulting therapists to try to get better.
She then appeared for the first time in the cinema in 1997 where she played small roles as in
In and Out
by Franck Oz, or in the comedy
Big Party
by Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan
.
She then held the lead role in the sitcom
Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane
, directed by Daniel and Sue Paige, alongside Michael Rosenbaum.
But it's in the movie
Sex Intentions,
released in 1999, that it really surprises the public.
She plays, alongside Ryan Phillippe and Sarah Michelle Gellar, the naive young teenager Cécile Caldwell.
Her character inspired by Cécile de Volanges from
Dangerous Liaisons
makes an impression, especially during the kiss scene with Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Until 2008, she chained the roles, playing alongside Scarlett Johansson, Evan Rachel Wood or even Morgan Freeman.
She notably embodies the first female role in the blockbuster
Hellboy
directed by Guillermo del Toro.
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A child and back to the screen
On the heart side, the actress married comedian Ahmet Zappa in 2004, but divorced in 2006. In 2011, she welcomed a young boy named Arthur, from her relationship with artistic director Jason Bleick.
Audiences finally found her on screens in 2012 when she accepted the female lead role in
Bruce Helford 's sitcom
Anger Management
.
She also appeared in the first episodes of Ryan Murphy's
American Crime Story: The People v.
OJ Simpson
, in which she plays Kris Jenner.
While she had chosen to remain silent about her childhood and her private life, in 2018, she decided to speak.
On Instagram, she reveals in the caption of a photo to be suffering from multiple sclerosis.
She then describes her daily life: “I am disabled.
I fall sometimes.
I drop things.
To get the message across, in February 2019, she appeared on the Oscars after-party
red carpet
accompanied by a cane to help her walk.
A subject that she discusses in more depth in her book.
Sober since 2016, she also breaks the silence on the years of trauma she has experienced.
“My sense of trauma was greater than I thought.
I didn't realize that the assault I suffered was so central to my life,” she told
People.
“I had so much shame and guilt.
I'm grateful that I felt safe enough to put it together.
Being able to work on it with a therapist and other writing really relieved that burden I felt."
