BIOGRAPHY: CHLOE SEVIGNY

Laurell Haapanen / Mr. Showbiz / 2001

"I feel really lucky that everything just happened by chance or fate but I worry, too. I remember when I would look at Seventeen or Sassy and I'd think, 'All these girls, they're so beautiful. And look at me. I'm not.' I don't want girls to look at me and compare themselves and have the same kinds of feelings I had." - Chloë Sevigny

Cinematically speaking, Chloë Sevigny is the best thing to happen to white trash since someone figured out that it's possible to make a trailer twice as wide. The irony is that this actress from the Connecticut 'burbs has blue blood coursing through her veins and spent most of her late teens and early 20s personifying a trendy East Coast club kid in magazines and ads.

Sevigny, a descendant of 17th-century court gossip the Marquise de Sévigné, grew up in "Aryan" Darien, Conn., the second child in a nuclear family. Suffice it to say that she wasn't in love with her hometown. "I despised it," she told the Mail and Guardian in 1997. "I wasn't friendly with anyone in school. When I was a little girl, all the girls were asking, 'My daddy drives a BMW. What does your daddy drive?'"

Motivated by a distinct distaste for her Wonder Bread surroundings and nurturing a burgeoning fashion sense (informed by the blue hair and Doc Martens of the girlfriend of her skate-punk older brother, Paul), Sevigny started sneaking into Manhattan on weekends, joining the hormonal throngs congregating at Washington Square Park. Among her pals was Harmony Korine, a young man straddling the genius-nutjob fence. He and Sevigny spent their days hanging with the skaters and their nights taking advantage of friends' cushy jobs at NYC's top clubs.

By the time Sevigny moved permanently to the city at age 18, she was already a hot commodity. A year earlier, she'd been approached by photographer Nina Schultz, whose portfolio of Sevigny pics soon had her tagged the "It Girl." Sevigny's flair for mixing and matching thrift-store finds resulted in modeling gigs for chi-chi designers like Miu Miu, as well as for the teen mag Sassy, at which she also interned as a fashion assistant. She subsequently worked as costume mistress for Sonic Youth and Lemonheads music videos ("Sugar Kane" and "Big Gay Heart," respectively). And even when she swapped her long blonde locks for a pink buzz cut - a look that prompted a brief ban from her parents' home - media mongers couldn't get enough of Chloë. The first wave of Sevigny rapture peaked when novelist Jay McInerney (author of the hip '80s novel Bright Lights, Big City) proclaimed in an essay for The New Yorker that the 19-year-old was the epitome of her generation.

"I don't know what my generation is," protested Sevigny in a 1997 Surface article. "All I know is that I'm not going to speak for my generation. I can only speak for myself."

Although she didn't know it, Sevigny would soon share the spokesperson cross with Korine. The aspiring filmmaker managed to make good on a chance meeting with director Larry Clark and spent three weeks in 1994 writing the script for Kids. An all-too-realistic examination of teen promiscuity, drugs, and AIDS, the film proved to be one of the most sensationalist releases of the year, and while Sevigny and her friends all acted as Korine's muses, Clark and Korine initially cast a younger professional actress in the role that Sevigny in part inspired. Justice prevailed in the end, and Sevigny assumed her rightful place in the cast.

Even now, years after the film's release, people still approach Sevigny, assuming that she is her Kids alter ego Jennie, a young girl who becomes infected with HIV when she loses her virginity. "I still get street kids coming up and hugging me, especially HIV kids," Sevigny told the Calgary Sun in 1998. When asked by Dazed and Confused if she minded the lingering attention, Sevigny quoted some advice offered to her by seasoned actor Seymour Cassel: "If people recognize you, you can't be mean to them because [in film], it's your only applause."

Riding the notoriety of Kids, Sevigny selected Steve Buscemi's semi-autobiographical flick Trees Lounge for her next big-screen outing. In it, she played a small-town teen who seduces her aunt's alcoholic ex-boyfriend, an ice cream man (Buscemi). Sevigny later confessed that she'd been nervous about working with "real" actors, but her own lack of training lent an air of authenticity to her character. She also confessed to having a wee crush on Buscemi, although she had begun dating Korine prior to filming Trees.

With Trees Lounge on the books, Korine and Sevigny started production on Gummo, the heart-warming tale of cat-killing teens. Sevigny pulled double-duty as actress and costume designer, employing "a sort of late-'80s, heavy metal, middle-America look" to capture the stultifying atmosphere of the film's small-town Ohio milieu. It was a far cry from her glossy ad persona, Jennie's innocent bob and freckled nose, and her trashy nymphet appeal in Trees.

Gummo wasn't exactly a runaway hit in the United States, but it did pinch an international award or two. The same, alas, could not be said for Sevigny's 1998 film, Palmetto, in which she played a spoiled rich kid who uses Woody Harrelson to bilk her sick daddy out of a dollar or two. Undeterred, Sevigny concentrated on her fifth feature, Whit Stillman's well-received early-'80s paean The Last Days of Disco. Having conquered Lolita and trashablanca territory, Sevigny embraced the pearls and upper-middle-class mentality of her Darien upbringing for her role in Disco. Traces of Jennie lingered, though - in Disco, Sevigny's naïve assistant book editor Alice unwittingly exchanges her virginity for a sexually transmitted disease.

Disco earned a tidy sum, along with positive reviews for Sevigny. She next joined the cast of Korine's third indie feature, julien donkey-boy, which examined the happy-go-lucky life of an insane, incestuous murderer (Trainspotting's Ewan Bremner) and his sweet pregnant sister (Sevigny). In a New York Times article, Korine regretted that Ewan didn't succumb completely to madness during filming, and that he, Korine, hadn't had enough time to impregnate Sevigny before production started.

With julien in the can, Sevigny accepted a part in the supposedly low-radar Boys Don't Cry, Kimberly Peirce's fictional account of the real-life murder of Brandon Teena, a k a Teena Brandon, a teenage girl who was murdered for passing as a boy. Sevigny brought a dignity and wistfulness to Lana Tisdall, the young Nebraska woman who fell in love with Brandon, and her efforts were rewarded with a 1999 Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod (co-star Hilary Swank won the Best Actress statuette for her portrayal of Teena). Audiences and critics were enthralled by Sevigny's portrayal, though Tisdall recently filed a slander suit against Boys distributor Fox Searchlight.

Sevigny's other winter releases included Map of the World, with Sigourney Weaver and Julianne Moore, and the HBO telepic If These Walls Could Talk 2, in which she and Dawson's Creek star Michelle Williams play two circa-'70s lesbians. She was also featured in another sensationalized flick, spring's American Psycho, starring Christian Bale and Reese Witherspoon.

Back in 1998, the self-effacing Sevigny told the New York Post, "I get doors slammed in my face all the time. Even with indies, backers want a big name. If you're not a box office draw, there it goes." What would you bet that she encounters nothing but open doors from here on out?