Alicia Silverstone Challenges Life
If Kelsey Grammer can play Macbeth and Ethan Hawke can do a slacker Hamlet, Alicia Silverstone tackling Shakespeare hardly qualifies as groundbreaking.
But speaking Shakespearean verse AND singing AND dancing, as she does in this week's ``Love's Labour's Lost,'' is another matter. Who knew she could sing?
``Not I,'' replied Silverstone, who is smaller and even prettier than she photographs. ``That's one of the things I hoped Ken Branagh, who adapted the play and directed, would overlook.''
In his latest cinematic Shakespearean foray, Branagh (``Henry V'') has reset one of the Bard's lesser-known comedies in a pre-World War II 1939 England and interspersed into the heavily edited text a batch of classic '30s romantic songs by the likes of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and George Gershwin.
Silverstone, playing a French princess attended by her ladies of the court, visits an English university and finds romance amid the songs and dances.
For someone who only makes a movie a year, this ``Love's Labour's'' is truly an oddball project.
``I can't guess what this movie would do for my career,'' admitted the actress, whose biggest hit, ``Clueless,'' was three years ago. ``Although I'm in control of my career, I'm not career-minded. It's not my focus, but when it is, it is. What I care about is that my life is more important than my acting.
``But I have this thought that filmmakers must be able to tell I'm good enough by every part I do. Smart enough to know like Kenneth was. I'd never done this before, but to me, this was like making `Clueless,' you got a feeling of excitement. It's very organic.''
If Silverstone holds her own with a mostly English cast, it wasn't due to luck. She spent an intense month of study on the text and character to be prepared for the London filming. ``I was pretty scared,'' she said, adding, ``That's great. All it does is force you to work really hard and, I must say, that work paid off.
``In just two weeks, we had to learn all these dances and Ken shot them in the old-fashioned style, three shots for the whole scene rather than fast-cutting like MTV where you could cheat and have dancers inserted instead of actors.''
A dance student as a kid, she was able to navigate the choreography. As for singing, well, if Silverstone is not about to give Jennifer Lopez a race to the recording studio, she did have a revelation of sorts. ``What I learned is every human being can sing,'' she says.
At 23, Silverstone seems light years from the kid who was ``discovered'' in MTV music videos and became the teen queen of the moment with ``Clueless,'' only to see it suddenly evaporate with one bomb movie (``Excess Baggage,'' which she produced) amid gossip about her weight.
``I'm a vegan; I became one for moral reasons,'' she said, meaning she practices a strict non-dairy vegetarianism and believes that a meat diet is environmentally and personally harmful.
``I got skinny and my skin looked good - look how when you make an ethical choice you get a positive. I had sleeping problems and finally I was sleeping. Once I became a vegan, I had more energy. And my conscience is clear, I'm not damaging the world. A lot of that comes with getting an education.''
Silverstone never went to college after high school. To properly use her celebrity for causes like animal welfare and the rainforest, she reads avidly, watches documentaries and talks to people. Last May, she went to Peru with Woody Harrelson's Oasis environmental group, ``To save the rainforest in the Amazon.'' She visited Machu Picchu, canoed in the rain, fought bugs, diarrhea and a skin rash, but loved every minute despite the dangers.
``Life is just as frightening,'' she figured. ``I could be hit by a bus walking down the street in New York or L.A. But we were scared going in because some loggers had been shot - with bows and arrows.''
