Chloë Sevigny is an American actress, model, and fashion designer. She made her motion picture debut in the 1995 controversial film Kids, appearing in a lead role and earning an Independent Spirit Award nomination for the performance. She also embarked on a successful modeling career in the 1990s. As an actress, she made a name for herself for her roles in contemporary independent cinema.
Background
Ethnicity:
Chloë Sevigny's father was of half French-Canadian and half Scottish/English descent, and her mother's heritage is Polish.
Chloë Sevigny was born on November 18, 1974, in Springfield, Massachusetts, the United States. She is the second child of French-born David Sevigny, an insurance-accountant-turned-interior-designer, and Polish-American elementary school teacher Janine Sevigny née Malinovski.
She was raised in Darien, Connecticut, although the Sevigny family was considered "poor" in the wealthy Darien neighborhood, the early years of Chloë and her older brother Paul were for the most part agreeable. Still, both Chloë and her family were scoffed at in the community for their lack of money. She recalled: "My parents didn’t have a lot of friends in town. We never had as much money as everybody else, so we were never members of any of the clubs or anything like that. I didn’t have many girlfriends, either. In elementary school, the girls were really nasty. They would say, ‘Your mom shops at Stop & Shop because you’re poor,’ or ‘Your dad drives a Volkswagen, you’re poor.’ I remember from day one not buying that and not being part of the clique."
Education
Already as a child, Chloë began interesting herself in both acting and fashion, sewing her own clothes, auditioning for kids’ commercials (which Chloë "was really into" at the time) and attending annual summer theater camps with another Darien alum, the would-be That ’70s Show star, Topher Grace.
But when young Chloë began attending Darien High School, a school dominated by the offspring of well-off and influential Darienites, she quickly began losing interest in education, often skipping school to hang out with her brother’s skater friends in New York City.
Throughout high school Chloë would continue to sneak away from school, particularly to hang out in New York City, and upon graduating from Darien High at 18, she quickly acquired her first apartment in Brooklyn, where she soon blended in with the local rave scene.
Career
When she was 17, Sevigny was spotted on the street by a fashion editor for Sassy magazine. Impressed by her flair for street fashion, the editors of the progressive teen mag asked Sevigny to intern in their offices which led to a few modeling jobs with both Sassy and x-girl, the urban clothing line created by Sonic Youth frontwoman Kim Gordon. At this time Sevigny also spent a lot of her time watching the skateboarders who convened in New York's Tompkins square park. It was here that she met young aspiring director Harmony Korine, and a friendship ensued, resulting in her being cast as the lead in Korine and Larry Clark's collaboration Kids (1995).
Chloë portrays Jennie, a 14-year-old girl who ends up losing her virginity to a teenage HIV-positive skater boy. Finding out about her HIV, Jennie tries to track the boy down to stop him from giving the disease to anyone else, only to end up raped by one of his friends at a hazy house party. A small but arresting film, Kids gained some attention for its tough subject matter and performances, and Chloë’s acting was hailed by critics, her touching portrayal of Jennie earning her an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Female in 1996.
Next, Chloë appeared in writer-director Steve Buscemi’s feature film debut Trees Lounge (1996) opposite Buscemi himself, Samuel L. Jackson and Anthony LaPaglia, before moving on to portray Dot in Harmony Korine’s own experimental and controversial directorial debut, Gummo, in 1997, then Pearl in Korine’s equally challenging Julien Donkey-Boy in 1999.
Following the post-Kids attention, Chloë continued to choose her next roles according to her own preference, appearing in 1998 in both Whit Stillman’s Last Days of Disco with Kate Beckinsale, Jennifer Beals, and Robert Sean Leonard, and the largely unnoticed Palmetto, starring Woody Harrelson, Gina Gershon, Michael Rapaport, and Marc Macaulay.
In 1998, Chloë was cast as Lana Tisdel in Kimberly Peirce’s ambitious and hard-hitting indie drama Boys Don’t Cry. Based on real events, the film recounts the life of Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank), a transgender man who falls in love with Chloë’s Lana, but is raped and murdered by his male friends when they discover his female genitalia.
According to the Boys Don’t Cry DVD, writer-director Peirce only ever considered Jodie Foster and Chloë for the role of Lana Tisdel, but decided on Chloë after seeing her performance in The Last Days of Disco. While Chloë had originally auditioned for the role of Brandon, Peirce also saw Lana as a better character for her.
Premiering in American theaters on October 22nd, 1999, Boys Don’t Cry received universal accolades, and both Swank and Chloë earned worldwide praise for their respective performances, Swank ultimately winning the Best Actress Oscar and Golden Globe for Brandon and Chloë her first-ever Golden Globe- and Academy Award-nominations for Best Supporting Actress. Her performance also gained her the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actress the following year, but according to Chloë herself, the Oscar nomination, in particular, didn’t really open any new doors for her.
Despite half a decade of more or less controversial movies, however, Chloë entered the Millenium with no evident intentions of choosing her roles with more prudence. Following Boys Don’t Cry and a role in Scott Elliott’s A Map of the World (1999), Chloë appeared next as the quiet, mousy Jean in Mary Harron’s American Psycho (2000), a film adaptation of the controversial and graphically violent Bret Easton-Ellis novel. In the film, Christian Bale appears in one of his most memorable roles as the handsome investment banking executive Patrick Bateman, whose secret voracious desire for sanguinary violence escalates into unnerving fantasies of murder. Although generally positively received, the film also raised much discussion regarding the suitability of graphic violence in film.
That same year, Chloë was also offered a supporting role in the Reese Witherspoon-blockbuster Legally Blonde but passed on the offer. This Chloë says she regrets to this day.
The 2002 indie Demonlover was indeed next for Chloë, followed by Party Monster (2003) and the experimental Lars von Trier-drama Dogville (2003), starring Nicole Kidman, John Hurt, Jeremy Davies, and James Caan. However, none of these films, nor any before them, would cause as big a controversy as her 2003 appearance in The Brown Bunny.
Written and directed by Vincent Gallo, The Brown Bunny featured Gallo and Chloë in the central roles as Bud and Daisy. Haunted by visions of Daisy, his former lover, Bud embarks on a lonely cross-country road trip, during which his and Daisy’s backstory is gradually revealed. The controversy that arose from the film did not have so much to do with the story, however, as with one particular scene, in which Chloë infamously performs unsimulated oral sex on Gallo’s Bud.
Her career took a slightly more mainstream turn as she next appeared in small supporting roles first in Shattered Glass (2003), then Jim Jarmusch’s critically acclaimed Broken Flowers (2005). Then, in 2004, Chloë would make her small screen debut, guest-starring as Monet in episode "East Side Story" of the award-winning sitcom Will & Grace. This role was then followed by more small-scale films, such as the made-for-TV thriller Mrs. Harris (2005) and M. Blash’s largely ignored Lying (2006) (not even released Stateside until its North American DVD premiere in May 2009). In addition to another largely unseen thriller, Sisters (2006), Chloë also appeared as the Catholic nun Clara in the movie 3 Needles in 2005, a performance for which she has later gained some critical recognition, despite the film having mostly gone unnoticed due to nonexistent distribution.
In 2005, however, after many unsuccessful auditions for various TV series, Chloë was offered a starring role in HBO’s new polygamist drama Big Love, co-starring Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Harry Dean Stanton. Hoping the role would lead to more mainstream work, Chloë seized the opportunity, and in March 2006 debuted the manipulative, ultra-conservative and credit card-challenged Nicolette "Nicki" Grant, the second wife of Mormon polygamist Bill Henrickson (Paxton).
Chloë’s riveting performance as Nicki earned her much praise throughout the course of the show, which culminated in 2010 in her second-ever Golden Globe nomination - and first win. The show’s fifth and final season concluded on March 20th, 2011.
Alongside Big Love, however, Chloë continued to appear in movies as well and landed among other films her first genuinely big Hollywood production in David Fincher’s crime thriller Zodiac (2007), starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., and Mark Ruffalo.
In 2008, however, with no films lined up for release and Big Love on hiatus, Chloë shifted focus from acting to fashion. In addition to appearing in ads for the French fashion house Chloé with actress Clémence Poésy and model Anja Rubik, in February 2008 Chloë debuted her first line of clothing for Humberto Leon and Carol Lim’s hip New York-based label Opening Ceremony. The Chloë Sevigny for Opening Ceremony collection was characterized by its distinctive ’90s vibe and gingham prints, very reflective of Chloë’s personal style, and although sure to divide opinions, quickly sold out in more than 100 boutiques worldwide.
In 2009 Chloë again turned back to acting, appearing in short films such as Beloved and The Fragile White Blossoms Emit a Hypnotic Cascade of Tropical Perfume Whose Sweet Heady Odor Leaves Its Victim Intoxicated, as military behavioral analyst Emily Riley in the straight-to-DVD thriller The Killing Room, and most notably as Ingrid in Werner Herzog’s psychological drama My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done with Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, and Big Love‘s Grace Zabriskie.
In 2010, Chloë appeared as the nymphomaniac Jennifer in the mainstream comedy Barry Munday, starring Patrick Wilson and Judy Greer, before moving on to portray Judy Marks opposite Rhys Ifans and David Thewlis in the Howard Marks-biopic Mr. Nice.
In 2012, Chloë’s work schedule was dominated for the first time entirely by television. Having brought Big Love to a close in March 2011, Chloë next took on guest roles on both Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (a one-off as the mysterious Christine Hartwell) and American Horror Story: Asylum, the second season of the gruesome but all-the-more popular horror anthology. She then took on her next big starring role in Sky Atlantic’s Hit & Miss, a hard-hitting and edgy six-part miniseries set in Britain’s Manchester about Mia, a pre-op transgender female, and hitman who one day finds out she fathered a son with her former girlfriend before she began transitioning.
Chloë next took on a number of more or less recurring roles in various American comedies - Louie in 2012, and The Mindy Project, Doll & Em and Portlandia in 2013 - and reunited with her Lying co-star Jena Malone for another M. Blash drama, The Wait. In 2013, Chloë also landed another starring role in Those Who Kill, a pilot for an exciting new A&E Networks serial killer procedural with James D’Arcy, James Morrison, Bruce Davison, and Omid Abtahi.
In the beginning of 2016, Sevigny appeared in the Canadian horror film Antibirth opposite Natasha Lyonne. The film follows a story of a small-town woman who becomes pregnant through unknown circumstances. In 2016 and 2017, respectively, Sevigny also reprised her role in Bloodline, becoming a main cast member in the third and final season. Sevigny also appeared in a supporting role in The True Adventures of Wolfboy, which was filmed in Buffalo, New York in late-2017, and had a lead portraying Minerva Johnson, a small-town police officer facing a zombie apocalypse, in Jim Jarmusch's comedy horror film The Dead Don't Die (2019).
In November 2019, Sevigny appeared in Queen & Slim, an American romantic drama film directed by Melina Matsoukas (in her feature directorial debut) and written by Lena Waithe, from a story by James Frey and Waithe. The film stars Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Chloë Sevigny, Flea, Bokeem Woodbine, and Indya Moore. Described as a modern-day take on the legend of Bonnie and Clyde, the plot follows two African-Americans who must go on the run after killing a police officer during a traffic stop gone wrong.
Religion
The everyday life of the Sevigny children was religious, both Chloë and Paul having been raised strict Catholics by their parents. But, as she told The New York Post in 2003, though she rebelled against the family religion in her youth, Chloë is to this day a practicing Catholic.
Views
Chloë Sevigny has been famous in the gay community throughout her acting career as she supports LGBTQ rights.
Quotations:
"It's not what you spend but how you wear it that counts. The key is often to dress up inexpensive basics with accessories. Something like a beautiful designer bag or belt can make everything else look richer and more luxurious."
'In Hollywood, you can't say anything bad about anybody or everyone is going to attack you. It's like you always have to put on a happy face, be the phony baloney, and I'm so not that. I never was that; I'll never be that. That is part of the business that I don't like."
'You hear about these actresses who avoid going to fashion shows lest they not be taken seriously. I don't like going because it's such a circus. It's always anticlimactic. But I'm not ashamed to admit it: Fashion is superficial, but I love it."
Personality
During Sevigny's teenage, she got involved in drug abuse and experimented with marijuana and hallucinogens. Her concerned mother made her attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
Physical Characteristics:
Chloë Sevigny underwent dental surgery in December 2003 after falling in a pair of high-heeled boots and breaking four of her teeth.
Quotes from others about the person
"Chloë's not afraid to look different, and in looking different, she looks very charismatic. No one in Los Angeles gets it. Her attitude is foreign to this city. She is so not Fred Segal." - Cameron Silver
"The fashion world is fascinated by her. Because not only is she talented, young and attractive, she stands out in a sea of often clichéd looking actresses." - Marc Jacobs
