‘I didn’t have a huge amount of ambition’: Selma Blair is returning to Hollywood on her own terms
After illness forced her to take a break from acting, the Cruel Intentions star unveils her return to Hollywood – and next move.
As though her real life is a scene from a Hollywood movie, Selma Blair is sitting in the passenger seat of a convertible, breezing down the palm tree-lined streets of West Hollywood. “My friend is driving. It’s very glamorous, I’m in a rental Porsche: I’m driving on Fairfax Ave,” Blair tells Stellar.
As Blair – who was raised in Detroit, Michigan – recalls, her move to the city early in her career happened almost by accident.
“I started out in New York trying to make it on Broadway,” she explains.
“[Then] my agent told me, ‘You should move out to LA for pilot season.’ I think every pilot I tested for, it was between me and one other person.
“Everything was almost. Almost.”
Such is the cutthroat nature of Hollywood that Blair recalls other “almosts” – she was nearly cast as Joey Potter in teen drama Dawson’s Creek (the part ultimately went to Katie Holmes), and auditioned for director Darren Aronofsky’s dark 2000 film Requiem For A Dream. “It was between me and the lovely and wonderful Jennifer [Connolly], who got it,” Blair explains. “[Aronofsky] wrote me a letter. I had said, ‘I’d give my left arm to be in your movie!’
“And he’s like, ‘Well, you don’t have to give your left arm! The next one I do …’ And that was like 30 years ago.
“I was happy at the time to get [the parts] I got. I didn’t have a huge amount of ambition, I was happy to be in a supporting role. And now I am a little greedier.”
Those supporting roles still made all the difference, putting the now-53-year-old on the map via a clutch of popular films aimed at teenagers and young adults in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
She was an awkward schoolgirl in 1999’s Cruel Intentions, the rival-turned-friend to Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods in 2001’s Legally Blonde and starred alongside Cameron Diaz and her close friend Christina Applegate in 2002’s The Sweetest Thing, a romantic comedy that would go on to become a cult favourite.
Of her supporting roles in Cruel Intentions and Legally Blonde, Blair reflects: “It was really fun to be part of something that feels like such Americana.”
Blair is on the verge of a return to acting after years away from the screen; in 2018, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, an auto-immune disease of the central nervous system. After rounds of chemotherapy and stem cell treatment, Blair has been relapse-free for a “couple of years”.
“That, of course, means the world to me that I’m not, at this moment, accumulating more damage in my brain. I have also made a lot of strides with the vibe of neuroplasticity.
“I’m very, very lucky. Everyone’s experience with MS is different. I think I do have a certain place [to speak publicly]. My big mouth likes to see what I can do about stigma.”
Like many actors, Blair is also making moves in business. She is an investor in Australian-owned and made skincare brand ESK, and has even co-developed her own product, Ultimate A Gold – a night cream containing retinal, Lactiobionic acid, Hyaluronic acid, Niacinamide and Butylresorcinol – with the brand’s founder, Sydney-based Dr Ginni Mansberg.
As she prepares for her acting return, Blair (who gave birth to her son, Arthur Saint Bleick, with her ex-boyfriend, designer Jason Bleick, in 2011) has never been more conscious about self-care.
“There was a time when my skin was really clear. I was lucky. After I had my son, my skin erupted,” Blair says.
“I was trying all these facials and products and my skin barrier broke down. Someone gave me a calming cleanser from ESK and … it made a huge difference. [Dr Ginni and I] started working on this collaboration to address my ageing skin.
“I am post-menopausal; things shifted really quickly in my skin. It just happens. if we’re lucky enough to get older.”
The improvement in her health means Blair is back on film sets, and has three movies set for release: a war drama titled Stay Forte, There There (helmed by Mark and Michael Polish) and the supernatural thriller Silent.
“There are some [roles] coming up that I never saw coming. I am excited about getting back into movies.”
Her return to filmmaking has also given Blair pause to look back on those early, heady days in her adopted hometown, when she was building her career and rejoicing in her initial wins. “I loved LA in the late ’90s,” she says.
“Because I really did have a regular life [before that] in a prep school, in suburban Detroit.
“I remember driving on the 101 [freeway in LA] to my job on the Warner Bros lot and really having that Jerry Maguire moment, with the window down. ‘I’m in a show! I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.’
“I’ll never take it for granted.”
Selma Blair’s Ultimate A Gold is available at eskcare.com. Read the full interview with Selma Blair inside Stellar this Sunday. For more from Stellar, click here.
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Originally published as ‘I didn’t have a huge amount of ambition’: Selma Blair is returning to Hollywood on her own terms
