Alicia Silverstone: I was fat shamed filming Batman and Robin

I think her series of flops had more to do with her attitude to Hollywood.

She does look fat in that photo.

(R2) So does Clooney. That Batman was so bad. Just terrible. I've seen high school plays with better acting than that. Thank God, Bale came along and saved it.

Real empowering acting. So empowering for women.

“I always go to: there are bigger things in the world” ... the “Lodge” star added.

But, are there?

I remember when this happened. They were pretty brutal to her in the press. No way could they get away doing that to an actress now..

Seems like the fat shaming/pressure to be thin was really intense in the late 90s. Some of the music videos of that era make me cringe, seeing how bone-thin the singers were.

I love her!

What a fatso!

Fat, fat, the water rat!

The costume is terrible but she doesn't look fat at all. Fucking delusional idiots.

Sorry, I can't muster up much empathy for an actress that has far more money and opportunity than me because the media, which she courts when times are good, treated her unfairly. I've got my own problems.

Good for her. Fucking pricks.

When George Clooney was a movie star....

I feel bad for her. It’s wrong to do that to people.

It’s always a strange setup though when someone in her position complains about it because she was part of that same machine.

She started off as “hot girl” in Aerosmith videos. She was cast because of how she looked. Her character gets her navel pierced in this video. Surely they told her that when she was cast and they would not have considered a woman who didn’t have a flat belly.

So she fit the mold and they cast her. Her career grew from there. She was very good in Clueless, but that character also was written as the hot girl guys wanted to bang and other girls wanted to be.

She wouldn’t have gotten any of her early roles without being a sexy, skinny young thing. So she out-competed others who were not sexy, skinny young things and to my knowledge she has never spoken up for the women who lost work because she looked the way producers wanted her to look when she was cast.

Then she was cast and they wanted her to look a certain way and it was...unfair to her.

It’s a mill that people are thrown into. They get pulverized. They want to be the main ingredient until they head toward the pulverizer and then they want to be the exception. It’s hard to have a lot of sympathy. People who never jump into the mill at all on principle have greater credibility as critics than those who played along, outcompeting everyone because they had the goods, and then cried victim when they outgrew the idealized looks that got them the job in the first place.

I remember her being slammed for how she looked at the Oscars in 1996, though truthfully the drab dress and hair did her no favors.

You think they paid $1.5 million for a fat bitch to blow out a batsuit?

I have tampons bigger than her.

"Thank God, Bale came along and saved it."

Is this a joke? Or do people really care this much about super hero movies?

lol those nipples on Robin's costume though 👅

She's got a point about fat-shaming in general but she's wrong about in in her role as Batgirl.

You can't have a morbidly obese Batgirl fighting crime on a mobility scooter.

R19 I’m with you on that thought.

And also, even for people who do think an endless parade of cloned superhero movies represents art worth saving...that person credits everything about the movie to Christian Bale? Not the writers, not the directors? People really do not get how movies are made. If there is any art, in almost all cases in film, that art is the vision of the writer(s) and the director. And even then, the actual product of the writers is a skeleton/framework, and the direction is more craft than art. Yes, good actors can breathe life into well-written roles, given good direction and editing, but it’s more the case of all the workers in a factory doing a great job of assembling their pieces than one person’s vision creating a beautiful car that runs perfectly. To credit Christian Bale with the Batman movies is like crediting some dude for the design and performance of the Mercedes he drives.

[quote]You can't have a morbidly obese Batgirl fighting crime on a mobility scooter.

Why ever not?

R21 Honestly, I would sooner watch Aidy Bryant in that movie than I would watch another clockwork, paint-by-numbers superhero movie. Not because of social justice but just because it would finally be something different. For fuck’s sake.

Fat whore

[Quote] You can't have a morbidly obese Batgirl fighting crime on a mobility scooter.

You probably could on the CW.

[Quote] No way could they get away doing that to an actress now..

But you can always get away with it when you're an actor.

You were hired to play Batgirl, not Fatgirl, now put down that damn donut.

Mama Cass Girl. Was it a singing part?

Send up the Fat Signal.

I used to do work in a hotel and I have to say she was one of the sweetest celebrities I had ever met. She was just very kind.

It wasn't so much that she was fat as bat girl, but she was heavier than she was in clueless and the studio didn't want that.

Apparently that whole episode changed her - and for the better! She had a horrible reputation leading up to it. Thanks to the Aerosmith video and then Clueless, she was given a two-picture deal with Producer credit and was completely out of control. Right after shooting Batman, (before it was released), she did a movie called Excess Baggage and was a complete nightmare on the set. It ended her career for awhile. No one wanted to hire her.......so Reese Witherspoon swept in and took over her career! (starting with Legally Blond - a plausible sequel to Clueless).

^^I worked for CAA at the time. I'm not kidding!

R32 Legally Blonde would make so much sense as a Clueless sequel.

Legally Blond was nothing but a cheap knockoff of Clueless.

Alicia was a much more warm and vivid screen presence than the cold and off-putting Witherspoon.

Silverston could never ace Tracy Flick, though.

R35 I agree with that. When I saw Legally Blonde, I remember feeling annoyed at what a subpar Clueless ripoff it was. But storywise, with just a couple of minor tweaks, it really does seem like it might have been written as a “Cher Goes to Harvard and Becomes Less Clueless” sequel.

That's because Reese was playing herself in Election.

[quote] Seems like the fat shaming/pressure to be thin was really intense in the late 90s.

I would say that continued well into the 2000s. I'm not sure exactly when that changed? I want to say perhaps the mid to late 2000s?

Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian’s asses changed it. Hate them both, but the popularity of their big butts is what provoked the love of fat asses and then fat everything.

R39 late 2000s. Remember Nicole Ritchie and Lindsay Lohan looking like corpses. And everyone was making fun of fat Britney.

I watched a Buffy episode today and at some angles the actresses look so thin they look unhealthy. It’s good that there’s been some evolution in that respect.

I was on a flight with her once and she was so pretty in person I had to force myself not to gawk. Then again, I’m a huge fan of Clueless and may be projecting.

I always thought ALL the Batman movies going back to 1989 were RUBBISH. I prefer the 1960's Batman tv show.

R43, I liked Batman Returns. Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman made the film though.

It's so unfair! And she was only compensated with a measly $3.33 million for that movie!

p.s.--what is "a strict vegan diet"?

I'd starve on that diet.

The actual problem was that her face looked fat... it suddenly became mushy, saggy and puffy.

She's still alive?

Her old stylist isn't.

I really think it was That hideous costume. Those had to been the worst Batman costumes ever. That's what happens when you have a flameing gay director. He almost killed the franchise.

Who was Poison Ivy?

[quote] [R39] late 2000s.

Sounds about right. By the early 2010s, when Lens Dunham was parading her nude, carbuncular body on screen, things had already changed.

The bullies she endured are now all on the DL. Big surprise.

Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian were mostly responsible for making curves and big asses the new standard.

Let's not pretend hip hop videos had no impact.

Chris O’Donnell was at his hottest in that shit movie.

r46, I love her kitchen and her diet.

She was awfully puffy for a "strict" vegan.

You can eat cake as a vegan?

If Mama Cass had had that kitchen . . . there would be a lot more ham in the refrigerator.

There was a lot of fat shaming and promoting anorexia in the 90s. Jesus, the entire cast of Ally McBeal weighed 120 lbs combined (and soaking wet), minus the black actress. A similar fat shaming happened with that chick from Days of our Lives that hosted the Biggest Loser.

R54, Scarlett Johansson should get a lot of credit, too. She made the curvier look more acceptable among women who otherwise would have gone for the lollipop WB network look that dominated actresses who were 5-10 years older.

What am I, chopped liver?

[quote] Who was Poison Ivy?

Lenny Leonard.

To put it delicately about Anna Nicole, certain looks appeal to certain demographics and always have. Plus, by the time Anna Nicole got really big, she was a camp train wreck and not an object of desire.

[Quote] Plus, by the time Anna Nicole got really big, she was a camp train wreck and not an object of desire.

The Guess era was pretty big.

[quote] To put it delicately about Anna Nicole, certain looks appeal to certain demographics

In Anna Nicole's case, her look apparently appealed to the nonagenarian demographic, and that worked out quite nicely for her.

That’s really interesting, R33. I’ve always wondered about her. Her IMDb page is littered with pilots she starred in that were never picked up. Sure, she didn’t have the same heat after Clueless, but she was a likable enough presence to risk a 13 episode mid season replacement on. And then nothing...

I always wondered if she was difficult behind the scenes.

Can you tell us any stories about when she was out of control? I’m fascinated.

So iconic. So 90s. She was only fat to twisted coastal elitist white people. Sad.

She wasn't fat, she was curvy.

Also Alicia should have been shamed for the mustache that she had in Batman and Robin. maybe I'll because I saw it on the big screen but didn't anybody notice that thick fuzz on her upper lip?

I will always like her for refusing to shake Elisabeth Hasselbitch's hand.

I remember people talking about how she was fat. I remember thinking she looked embarrassingly fat like she let herself go. Looking back, she doesn't look that bad.

Lena Dunham. Now that's fat.

That movie was about 25 years ago. Why is she bringing it up now?

R73 she has a new movie out, was promoting it, her career came up

And when her career came up, the press realized they were out of questions about Clueless and those Aerosmith videos.

I didn't realize what an asymmetrical face she had.

She was great in the Crush.

R67 until it didn’t.

Alicia just didn't look as pretty as an adult as she did as a teenager. Plus she was not much as an actress. Cher was not a hard role to play.

I honestly don't feel very sorry for her over the batman and Robin business. Anyone agreeing to do a superhero movie knows they really have to b in shape. it's part of the deal.

Disagree. Cher was a tricky character to play, who could be supremely annoying and dislikeable if not played right.

They were fucking awful to that child. I remember holding my breath as she was suspended upside down with a keyboard and perhaps bangs and a mask. Even the utility belt was chonky.

They should have just made Batgirl’s cape into a poncho.

I mean Joel Schumacher is gay, ofcourse he preferred a less sexually dimorphic look on his actress. And nipples on his batman. Straight boys prefer what she had going on though and thats the core audience

The real story is WEJT Chris O'Donnell.

R41 also Hilary Duff.

R42 SMG got really skinny towards the end. She tried to defend it by saying she's not very tall lol. And apparently she got into it with Alicia on the set of Scooby Doo because Alicia wanted the cast/crew to recycle.

R83, he’s spent the last eleven years on NCIS: Los Angeles, so even if you haven’t seen him, your grandfather definitely has. (And that means he’s made more money than he ever did during his movie star years, so it wasn’t a bad trade off).

She needs to just put on her big gurl panties and get over it. Oh wait...she already has them on...

Chris O'Donnell could not act his way out of a paper bag even if there were a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary on the other side.

[quote] She wouldn’t have gotten any of her early roles without being a sexy, skinny young thing. So she out-competed others who were not sexy, skinny young things and to my knowledge she has never spoken up for the women who lost work because she looked the way producers wanted her to look when she was cast.

[quote] Then she was cast and they wanted her to look a certain way and it was...unfair to her.

R15, totally agree.

I get her mixed up with Christina Applegate.

She (Silverstone) probably doesn't see that she had a huge advantage because she was thin, young, blonde, nubile, etc. She only sees that she got a little older, put on a few pounds, starred in a blockbuster, and got called "fat."

I never was interested to watch "Legally Blonde" and "Clueless," but both movies sound stupid.

"Clueless" is a good movie for its time. It's an update on Jane Austen's "Emma," and it's very sweet and well done.

She was considered fat. Batman had eraser nips. Robin bulged where he shoulda been a-bulgin'. This was the best Batman of all because it was the captured the comic book character. Then Nolan came and spoiled it all.

Let’s face it, she was only being hired for her looks. Nobody thought she was the next Meryl Streep.

She's in the movie for tits and ass. Kind of dumb of the whoever to tell her to reduce said tits and ass.

She's more beautiful today than she was back in her prime, although her career has taken a strange turn over the last decade or so. She works quite a bit and has been in some interesting movies but in nothing where she's able to stand out.

She can maintain any weight she pleases, it's her business. However, if she wants to star in a blockbuster Hollywood movie, she is being paid millions to conform to to the look the PTB want to convey.

I demand justice for Excess Baggage. It is a cinematic masterpiece.

Excess Flabbage.

I was always sad that the Stacey Dash, Dionne, didn’t have a larger career. I always thought she was the most gorgeous. Plus, her red BMW convertible was so much better than Cher’s Jeep.

Her politics aside, I wish she had been the breakout star, but maybe in another era.

Her politics aside....?

She’s a raging conservative. Made a fool of herself on Fox that’s hard to do, but Stacy managed to achieve the impossible.

Yes, the whole world knows that. Why would you wish her well in terms of career?

Remember when she fed her son like a bird?

r101, so what?

So what about anything? Never talk about anything because you can always so what to it.

Some quotation marks would have been appreciated.

Well youre not getting them because just because

R39 I was just thinking about that too. I started re-watching Bones from the beginning and noticed some seriously un-pc shade thrown at fat people. I was watching an episode yesterday and the boss said "Not unless he was a tub of lard". That would not fly these days, but it used to be a free for all when it came to obese people.

Yes, R70, her “moustache” was much commented on at the time.

From the RIP Shirley Knight thread

I don't see much of a resemblance. Knight had a very distinctive nose. And she didn't have that stroke mouth thing that Silverstone has.

I was thinking that photo of her looks a lot like Beverly D'Angelo too.

The '90s were the days of grunge, "heroin chic," Kate Moss, extremely thin models, pro "ana" (anorexia) and pro "mia" (bulimia) websites, etc.

The 90s was also the era of "Baywatch."

You mean women aren't obsessed with their looks anymore?

The 90’s were a bad time for this stuff and David E. Kelley hasn’t received as much shit as he deserves for perpetuating extremely unhealthy body types on all his show. I was watching an old SNL with Gwyneth and was shocked at how thin she looked. It wasn’t even appealing. She looked genuinely ill.

All that heroin chic shit back then raised an entire generation of girls with eating disorders.

Was the 1980s, 1970s, 1960s really all that different?

R115 no it was actually worse. Remember you had all the “scary skinny” thin shaming porn of Lara Flynn Boyle, Calista etc. it was incredibly hypocritical but in the 70s and 80s people were that thin and it was “how do you stay so thin?” Not even remotely shamed, it was the ideal. THe 90s/early 2000 we were at least aware that something was off and that you had to resort to unhealthy measures to get that way .

models in the 70s and 80s did not look nearly as dangerously thin as the ones in the 90s.

R116 Calista Flockhart starring in a movie about an eating disorder when she actively had an eating disorder is beyond disturbing. Talk about "method acting". Poor Calista still doesn't look like she has ever had a full meal.

R118 she was tiny on Supergirl.

Harrison Ford loves her tiny bony ass.

Their family dinners must be about as fun as Kelly Ripa's. Or Herman Munster when Lily put him on a diet. "Here is one almond. Make it last."

Good old Herman. Words to live by.

I remember an interview she did at the time where she was asked how much weight she was going to lose and she said none, she was just going to get fatter and fatter just to piss everyone off.

The problem was that her demeanor in interviews was always that of a slightly dumb teenager with behavioral issues. She let things get to her and then turned surly and ugly, which is partly why the press picked on her. It didn't help that she had a bad reputation for being a monster on the set too, as others mentioned.

Really, the Batgirl costume was the problem, instead of bitching about her weight they needed to just tweak it a little and not have that low utility belt highlight the fact that her waist had thickened a little.

I thought the same thing about the belt R123. She would be praised today for being "thick".

r123, She should have never been ask that question in the first place. She didn't need to lose no dam weight. You can look a the pics and interviews. The girl was a size 8 at the most. She was also was curvy which white people back then hated. Too bad Alicia didn't hit the scene a decade later when Queen Bey and Jlo made beautiful curvy women acceptable to mainstream audiences. Thank god hip-hop, with all of its flaws, forever change mainstream beauty standards. The industry was putting regular body weight, curvy often sexy white women through hell.

Anyone who thinks she looks "fat" in that cheapass Party City looking costume has an eating disorder.

She made a splash in "Clueless" but was a one-dimensional young actress. She should have studied and worked with good directors in small movies, instead of superhero cartoons.

Then she got bad skin.

Then she disappeared.

She had bad skin?

Go away, Alicia, I'm busy sucking Robin's dick.

she was horribly miscast. how did she get that or any roles?????? vapid/boring/sullen