Reasons Why Alicia Silverstone Is Anything but Clueless

As a Kid, She Looked Up to Meryl Streep and Jodie Foster

At the start of her career, a little after The Crush and right before Clueless, Silverstone was still trying to figure things out. She wasn’t sure what genre to dedicate herself to and said she was open to trying many new things. But one thing she knew for sure was that she wanted to be respected in the field.

Teenager portrait of Alicia Silverstone.

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“I want to follow Jodie Foster, She’s so smart, and she’s somebody I really look up to,” she told Rolling Stone back in 1993. She added that she wants to be respected like Meryl Streep, because “everybody looks at her like, ‘Wow, she’s just so great.’”

She Never Wanted to Be a Movie Star

Alicia knew she wanted to perform on stage, but she never had a burning desire to become a movie star. The whole showbiz pressure and sex-symbol thing just wasn’t her cup of tea. “I was just a theater kid. I never wanted to be in movies or TV,” she told The Guardian in 2015, “It was just too much for me.”

Alicia Silverstone with bangs hair during

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Without the motivation to audition for the best movies and keep herself at the top of Hollywood’s food chain, she slowly drifted away from the scene. She wasn’t willing to give in to the industry’s crazy and ridiculous games of power and status.

Using the Spotlight for Something Meaningful

Alicia says she prefers to use her fame to do good in the world instead of chasing after luxurious roles and going crazy with branding. “I decided I would use this to spotlight for something that is very meaningful to me,” she told The Guardian.

Alicia Silverstone speaks at the 2015 VegFest, a celebration of vegan and vegetarian lifestyles

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“I went on a quest to change the world, to make things better—for children, for the earth, for animals. I wasn’t paying attention to my career. I was paying attention to something else,” Silverstone added. Luckily, over the years, she’s learned a lot more how to balance her philanthropical work and her love of acting.

She Doesn’t Cater to the Mainstream

It’s fair to say, Alicia Silverstone lives her life just the way she wants to. Her beliefs and actions don’t always fall in line with the rest of society. Whether it’s her diet, her parenting style, the career choices she’s made, and the things that she’s said – she has it her way, regardless of what the rest have to say.

Alicia Silverstone in a press conference for the unveiling of a public service announcement to stop frog dissecting in schools.

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

While so many cultural trends come and go and are usually followed by Hollywood’s A-listers (from the Kabbalah to face tattoos to Bikram yoga), Alicia has remained loyal to her core beliefs. She doesn’t succumb to trends, which makes her a bit of an odd one in Hollywood, but a trait that makes us love her even more!

Under the Radar

Alicia Silverstone was never a hedonistic wild child who partied with young Hollywood. Although she easily could have been. She blew up at the young age of 17 as Aerosmith’s “chick,” a title that practically begs for things like drug, alcohol and parties. But that was never the case.

Alicia Silverstone is arriving at a studio photoshoot.

Photo by Lawrence Schwartzwald/Sygma/Getty Images

The actress was always ahead of her time. She was mature and serious as a kid, and her strong personality kept her name out of the headlines. But her quiet nature also had its cons, and she was often overlooked in an industry where most of the time, the louder you are, the more chance you have to be noticed.