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CHLOE DOESN'T CRYMerle Ginsberg / W / February 14, 2000
People would kill -- or at least hire a publicist -- to try to achieve the coolness factor Chloe Sevigny has accrued in her young life. Yet from the way Sevigny rolls her eyes when the "C" word comes up, you'd think she'd kill to get rid of it. Was she always the hippest girl in town? "No, no, no," she protests in a voice that is little more than a loud whisper. "I don't consider myself a hipster. But I've gotten used to the idea that that tag is just something I'm going to have to live with." To dispute it further, she admits that even at the age of 25, she lives at home with her mother in Darien, Conn. She's never even had her own New York apartment. "I guess I'll have to get one one of these days," she sighs. "So far, I've just crashed with friends. I'm like a Connecticut nerdy girl." Nerdy is hardly the first word that Sevigny calls to mind, unless you consider that she hit the spot where nerdy and cool came together as an explosive fashion phenomenon. This is the woman Jay McInerney dubbed "the coolest girl in the world" in a memorable 1994 New Yorker article; the girl who starred in the ultimate street-kid movie, Kids; the girl who modeled for the first-ever Miu Miu campaign. With the exception of Kids, written by her longtime on-again-off-again boyfriend, Harmony Korine, whom she met while hanging out in Washington Square Park seven years ago, these credentials make her cringe. She says that if she has any regrets, it's having done the New Yorker interview at all. It has to be said that talking is not Sevigny's preferred medium. Yet she has managed to give startling, memorable performances in all kinds of movies -- from Kids to Gummo (Korine's second movie, about cat killers), Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco, her 1999 trifecta Boys Don't Cry, julien donkey-boy and A Map of the World. She's quick to point out that she has yet to feature in a studio picture, although she'd love to work with Tom Cruise. This spring, she will appear as Christian Bale's secretary in American Psycho -- a role that has the distinction of being the only female character he doesn't hack to bits or rape. Most of the time, Sevigny lets those large doe eyes of hers tell the story. "She's like a silent-movie star in that way," says Boys Don't Cry director Kimberly Peirce. "Stuff just flows across her face." For a girl who started her acting career quite accidentally ("I wanted to do costumes for period films," she sighs, "but then I met Harmony and Larry Clark in Washington Square Park, and wound up in Kids), no one is more surprised than Sevigny herself at the acclaim she's received this year. "I'm really lucky it was such a bad year for movies!" she says with a laugh. "The whole Golden Globe thing was just surreal." It's a good thing Sevigny turned out to be such a skilled actress. She had little tolerance for her brief stints with other careers, such as modeling. "My face is totally crooked. I could never do runway. I've modeled now and again for money because it's easy, but it's so tedious and boring," she complains. Fashion doesn't cut it for her, either. She was hired as an intern at Sassy in the summer of 1992 because of her uncanny ability to spot trends. "I've never been interested in the high-fashion world," she sniffs. "And I never wanted to be Anna Wintour. I couldn't handle that much responsibility. And the idea of trendspotting as a career just sounds like hell." Yet she's known for having rather fashion-forward tastes, wearing the latest incarnations of YSL and Balenciaga to recent movie premieres when most budding Hollywood types were barely aware of these labels' first go-rounds. "I definitely don't do fashion according to Hollywood," she says with a smile, rolling her big eyes for the umpteenth time. "You will not see me with hair extensions or pashminas. Or in Badgley Mischka or Pamela Dennis." Sevigny does acknowledge the coolness of one thing: Boys Don't Cry, a movie that Peirce almost didn't make because so many people in Hollywood were chasing the rights to Brandon Teena's life. Sevigny says she would have played any part. At first, she read for Brandon. But when Peirce asked her if she had ever wanted to be a boy, she didn't even bother to lie and say yes. Now, of course, it's hard to imagine anyone else in the role of Lana, the girl Brandon fell in love with. "They offered my part to two other girls before I got it," Sevigny admits freely. "But I went in there and really fought for it. I loved Lana and the footage I'd seen of her in the documentary (The Brandon Teena Story) where she sings karaoke. So I copied her style." Sevigny and her co-star, Hilary Swank, even managed to make their love scenes palatable to squeamish audiences. "It's a credit to what an unbelievable job Hilary did," Sevigny says. "We sort of forgot she was female. Then it freaked us out when her husband [actor Chad Lowe] came down to the set. He made it a little harder to buy the illusion. But the whole shoot was intense. It was the hardest film I've ever made, every aspect of it." The phone rings: Entertainment Weekly has just informed Sevigny's publicist that it's picking her as a "shoo-in" for a best supporting actress Oscar nomination (the nominations will be announced Tuesday morning). Instead of getting up, shrieking and running to the phone, Sevigny slumps deeper into her chair, and stares even more intently at the floor. "God, I hope that's not true," she sighs. "I'm not ready to be nominated for an Oscar. I'm just not ready for that. All that pressure. I mean, I know it wouldn't be a bad thing, but I'm not really crossing my fingers. There are people who don't even go, like Woody Allen," she says, brightening momentarily. Then the eyes roll again. "I doubt I could get away with that." 
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