Chloë Sevigny

Biography

Chloë Stevens Sevigny ( SEV-ən-ee; born November 18, 1974) is an American actress and director. Known for her work in independent films with controversial or experimental themes, her accolades include a Golden Globe Award, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award. After graduating from high school, Sevigny found work as a model, and appeared in music videos for Sonic Youth and The Lemonheads, which helped acquire her "it girl" status. In 1995, she made her film debut in Kids, and became a prominent performer in the independent film scene throughout the late 1990s, with roles in such films as 1996's Trees Lounge. Sevigny rose to prominence with her portrayal of Lana Tisdel in the drama film Boys Don't Cry (1999), for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award For Best Supporting Actress. Throughout the 2000s, Sevigny appeared in supporting parts in numerous independent films, including American Psycho (2000), Demonlover (2002); Party Monster and Dogville (both 2003); and The Brown Bunny (2004). Her participation in The Brown Bunny caused considerable controversy due to a scene in which she performed graphic unsimulated fellatio. From 2006 to 2011, Sevigny portrayed Nicolette Grant on the HBO series Big Love, for which she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2010. She also appeared in mainstream films such as David Fincher's Zodiac (2007), and starred in numerous television projects, including the British series Hit & Miss (2012), and having supporting roles in Portlandia (2013), two seasons of American Horror Story; and in the Netflix series Bloodline (2015–2017). For her performance in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024), she earned her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Sevigny made her directorial debut in 2016 with the short film Kitty. Her third film as a director, a short titled White Echo, competed for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. She also has a career in fashion design concurrent with her acting work. Over the years, her alternative fashion sense has earned her a reputation as a style icon.

== Early life == Chloe Stevens Sevigny was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on November 18, 1974, the second child of Janine (née Malinowski) and Harold David Sevigny (1940–1996). Shortly before her birth, Sevigny's parents had resided in Marin County, California, before returning to the East Coast. She has one older brother, Paul, who is a member of the band A.R.E. Weapons. According to Sevigny, she added the diaeresis to her first name later in life, and it was not on her birth certificate. Her mother is Polish-American, and her father was of French-Canadian heritage. Sevigny and her brother were raised in a strict Catholic household in affluent Darien, Connecticut, where her father worked first as an accountant, and then as an art teacher. Despite Darien's wealth, the Sevignys had a "frugal" household, and were considered "the poor bohemians in [an] extremely prosperous neighborhood". Sevigny has stated that her father "worked very hard to bring us up in that town ... He wanted us to grow up in a really safe environment." As a child, Sevigny was diagnosed with scoliosis, but never received any surgical treatment for it. She often spent summers attending theater camp, with leading roles in plays run by the YMCA. She attended Darien High School, where she was a member of the Alternative Learning Program. While in high school, she often babysat actor Topher Grace and his younger sister. As a young teenager, she worked sweeping the tennis courts of a country club her family could not afford to join. Sevigny described herself as a "loner" and a "depressed teenager" whose only extracurricular activities were occasionally skateboarding with her older brother and sewing her own clothes. In high school, she grew rebellious and began experimenting with drugs, particularly hallucinogens. She has said that her father was aware of her experimentation, and even told her that it was okay, but that she had "to stop if she had bad trips". Despite her father's leniency, her mother forced her to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Sevigny later stated about her teenage drug use that "I had a great family life—I would never want it to look as if it reflected on them. I think I was very bored ... I often feel it's because I experimented when I was younger that I have no interest as an adult. I know a lot of adults who didn't, and it's much more dangerous when you start experimenting with drugs as an adult." Sevigny's father died of cancer in 1996, when she was 22 years old.

== Career ==

=== 1992–1998: Modeling and early acting roles ===

As a teenager, Sevigny would occasionally ditch school in Darien and take the train into Manhattan. In 1992, at age 17, she was spotted on an East Village street by Andrea Linett, a fashion editor of Sassy magazine, who was so impressed by her style that she asked her to model for the magazine; she was later made an intern. When recounting the event, Sevigny recalled that Linett "just liked the hat I was wearing." She later modeled in the magazine as well as for X-Girl, the subsidiary fashion label of the Beastie Boys' "X-Large", designed by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, which she followed with an appearance in the music video for Sonic Youth's "Sugar Kane". In 1993, at age 19, Sevigny relocated from her Connecticut hometown to an apartment in Brooklyn, and worked as a seamstress. During that time, author Jay McInerney spotted her around New York City and wrote a seven-page article about her for The New Yorker in which he dubbed her the new "it girl" and referred to her as one of the "coolest girls in the world." She subsequently appeared on the album cover of Gigolo Aunts' 1994 recording Flippin' Out and the EP Full-On Bloom, as well as in a Lemonheads music video, which further increased her reputation on New York's early 1990s underground scene. Sevigny met screenwriter and aspiring director Harmony Korine in Washington Square Park during her senior year of high school in 1993. The two became close friends, which resulted in her being cast in the low-budget independent film Kids (1995), which was written by Korine and directed by Larry Clark. Sevigny played a New York teenager who discovers she is HIV positive. According to Sevigny, she was originally cast in a much smaller role, but ended up replacing Canadian actress Mia Kirshner. Just two days before production began, the leading role went to Sevigny, who was 19 at the time and had no professional acting experience. Kids was highly controversial. The film was given an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America for its graphic depiction of sexuality and drug use involving teenagers. Despite this, the film was taken note of critically. Janet Maslin of The New York Times considered it a "wake-up call to the modern world" about the nature of the American youth in contemporary urban settings. Sevigny's performance was praised, with critics noting that she brought a tenderness to the chaotic, immoral nature of the film: "Sevigny provided the warm, reflective centre in this feral film." She received nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female. In 1996, Sevigny starred in actor/director Steve Buscemi's independent film Trees Lounge, in a relatively small role as Buscemi's object of affection. During this time, director Mary Harron, after having seen Kids, offered Sevigny a minor part in her film I Shot Andy Warhol (1996). Harron tracked Sevigny down to the SoHo clothing store Liquid Sky, where she was working at the time. Sevigny then gave her first audition ever, but ultimately decided to turn down the part. She later worked with Harron on American Psycho (2000). Instead of taking the part in I Shot Andy Warhol, Sevigny starred in and worked as a fashion designer on Gummo (1997), directed and written by Harmony Korine, who was romantically involved with Sevigny during and after filming. Gummo was as controversial as Sevigny's debut; set in Xenia, Ohio, the film depicts an array of nihilistic characters in a poverty-stricken community, and presents themes of drug and sexual abuse as well as anti-social alienated youth. Recalling the film, Sevigny cited it as one of her favorite projects: "Young people love that movie. It's been stolen from every Blockbuster in America. It's become a cult film". The film was dedicated to Sevigny's father, who died prior to the film's release. In 1998, Sevigny starred in the neo-noir thriller Palmetto, playing a young Florida kidnapee alongside Woody Harrelson. Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post lambasted the film for having "bad writing," ultimately deeming it "somewhat dull and sluggish." She then had a leading role as a Hampshire College graduate in the sardonic period piece The Last Days of Disco (1998), alongside Kate Beckinsale. The film was written and directed by cult director Whit Stillman and details the rise and fall of the Manhattan club scene in the early 1980s. Stillman said of Sevigny: "Chloë is a natural phenomenon. You're not directing, she's not performing—it's just real." Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that Sevigny "is seductively demure" in her performance as Alice. The film was generally well received, but was not a box-office success in the United States, only grossing $3 million—it has since become somewhat of a success as a cult film. Aside from film work, Sevigny starred in a 1998 Off-Broadway production of Hazelwood Jr. High, which tells the true story of the 1992 murder of Shanda Sharer. Sevigny played 17-year-old Laurie Tackett, one of four girls responsible for torturing and murdering 12-year-old Sharer. Sevigny stated she was so emotionally disturbed after playing the role that she began attending Mass again.

=== 1999–2006: Boys Don't Cry and The Brown Bunny === In 1999, Sevigny was cast in the independent drama Boys Don't Cry after director Kimberly Peirce saw her performance in The Last Days of Disco. Sevigny's role in Boys Don't Cry—a biographical film of trans man Brandon Teena, who was raped and murdered in Humboldt, Nebraska in 1993—was responsible for her rise to prominence and her mainstream success. Sevigny played Lana Tisdel, a young woman who fell in love with Teena, initially unaware of the fact that he was a transgender man and continued the relationship after learning about his gender identity. Boys Don't Cry received high praise from critics, and was a moderate box-office success. The film was widely credited as featuring some of the best acting of the year, with Sevigny's performance widely praised. The Los Angeles Times stated that she "plays the role with haunting immediacy", Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times stated that "it is Sevigny who provides our entrance into the story" and Rolling Stone wrote that she gives a "performance that burns into the memory". The role earned Sevigny supporting actress nominations for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. She won an Independent Spirit Award, a Satellite Award, and a Sierra Award for her performance. In 1999, Sevigny appeared in the experimental film Julien Donkey-Boy, which reunited her with writer-director Harmony Korine. In the film, she played the pregnant sister of a man with schizophrenia. Though it never saw a major theatrical release, the film garnered some critical praise; Roger Ebert gave the film his signature thumbs up, referring to it as "Freaks shot by the Blair Witch crew", and continuing to say, "The odds are good that most people will dislike this film and be offended by it. For others, it will provoke sympathy rather than scorn". Sevigny also had a small part in the drama film A Map of the World (1999), which starred Sigourney Weaver. In 2000, Sevigny played a supporting role in Mary Harron's American Psycho, based on the 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis. She portrayed the office assistant of the main character Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), a 1980s Manhattan yuppie-turned-serial killer. Similarly to the novel on which it was based, the film was controversial because of its depiction of graphic violence and sexuality in an upper-class Manhattan society. Sevigny also appeared as a lesbian in the Emmy Award-winning television film If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000), the sequel to the HBO television drama-film If These Walls Could Talk (1996). Sevigny credited it as the only film she ever made for financial benefit, to help her mother with whom she lived in Connecticut in 1998–2000. Following her appearance in If These Walls Could Talk 2, Sevigny was approached for a supporting role in the comedy Legally Blonde alongside Reese Witherspoon and offered $500,000; she declined and the role was given to Selma Blair. Instead, she starred in Olivier Assayas' French techno thriller Demonlover (2002) alongside Connie Nielsen, for which she was required to learn her lines in French. Sevigny described shooting the film as "strange", in the sense that Assayas hardly spoke to her during the filming, which she said was difficult because of the lack of "input". After spending nearly three months in France to complete Demonlover, Sevigny returned to New York to film the Club Kids biopic Party Monster (2003). She knew several of the people depicted in the film, including Michael Alig and James St. James, whom she had met during her frequent trips to New York City's club scene as a teenager. In film, Sevigny had a role in Lars von Trier's parable Dogville (2003), playing one of the various residents of a small mountain town, alongside Nicole Kidman, Lauren Bacall, and Paul Bettany. The film received mixed reactions, and was criticized by Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper as being "anti-American". In 2003, she re-united with former Boys Don't Cry star Peter Sarsgaard for the biographical film Shattered Glass, also alongside Hayden Christensen, about the career of Stephen Glass, a journalist whose reputation is destroyed when his widespread journalistic fraud is exposed. Sevigny played Caitlin Avey, one of Glass' co-editors.

Sevigny played the lead female role in the art house film The Brown Bunny (2003), which details a lonely traveling motorcycle racer reminiscing about his former lover. The film included a scene that involves Sevigny performing unsimulated fellatio - complete with swallowing - on star and director Vincent Gallo, who had been her boyfriend in real life. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and opened to significant controversy and criticism from audiences and critics. Additionally, a promotional billboard erected over Sunset Boulevard, which depicted a censored still from the film's final scene, garnered further attention and criticism. Sevigny defended the film saying, "It's a shame people write so many things when they haven't seen it. When you see the film, it makes more sense. It's an art film. It should be playing in museums. It's like an Andy Warhol movie." In an interview with The Telegraph in 2003, when asked if she regretted the film, she responded stating, "No, I was always committed to the project on the strength of Vincent alone. I have faith in his aesthetic ... I try to forgive and forget, otherwise I'd just become a bitter old lady." Despite the backlash toward the film, some critics praised Sevigny's performance, including Manohla Dargis of The New York Times who wrote, "Actresses have been asked and even bullied into performing similar acts for filmmakers since the movies began, usually behind closed doors. Ms. Sevigny isn't hiding behind anyone's desk. She says her lines with feeling and puts her iconoclasm right out there where everyone can see it; she may be nuts, but she's also unforgettable." Roger Ebert, although critical of The Brown Bunny, nevertheless said that Sevigny brought "a truth and vulnerability" to the film.

Sevigny had a major supporting role in Woody Allen's two-sided tragicomedy Melinda and Melinda (2004). Critic Peter Bradshaw described the film as "strange... a half-hearted experiment populated by undernourished lab rats." She guest-starred on the popular television show Will & Grace, and played small roles in Lars von Trier's Manderlay (2005) (a sequel to Dogville (2003)) and in Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers (2005). She played one of the several lovers of New York doctor Herman Tarnower in the HBO television film Mrs. Harris (2005) alongside Annette Bening and Ben Kingsley. In 3 Needles (2005), an anthology film about AIDS in various parts of the world, Sevigny had a major role as a Catholic nun visiting Africa. Her performance received good reviews; Dennis Harvey of Variety called her "convincing", while Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times referred to her as "ever-daring and shrewd." In 2006, Sevigny played the lead character in the experimental indie-film Lying (2006) with Jena Malone and Leelee Sobieski, portraying a pathological liar who gathers three female acquaintances for a weekend at her upstate New York country house; the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006. She had a starring role in Douglas Buck's 2006 remake of the Brian De Palma horror film Sisters (1973), playing a journalist who witnesses a murder.