After years of stealing scenes in films as varied as Clueless and Girl, Interrupted, Brittany Murphy is now being touted as an Oscar contender for her turn in the thriller Don't Say a Word. But she's taking the hype with a grain of salt--and a pound of sugar.
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At an afternoon photo shoot in Griffith Park, California, the scantily dressed Brittany Murphy, 23, is giggling and cooing and pouting for the camera, arching her back and flinging her legs in the air and doing unspeakably delicious things with lemons. The concept today is that she's selling lemonade at five cents a glass, but this Marilyn Monroe-meets-Elly May Clampett incarnation could just as easily be selling herself at $500 an hour.
It's not difficult to tell that she's a distant relative of Gypsy Rose Lee.
"I just have so much fun at photo shoots," she tells me, bursting with enthusiasm during a break. She tosses her head back, causing her tousled blonde hair to glint in the sunlight, her red lipstick so shiny I can almost see my reflection in her lips as she talks. "It's another chance to perform." Then, out of nowhere, comes this homespun rhyme: "The camera is my only friend/On that I can depend/It knows when I'm telling the truth/It knows when I'm lying on end."
"Bubbly" doesn't begin to describe her. She's also bouncy, and she's as alive with pleasure as the candy cigarettes she offers to everyone. The persistent giggle that reporters find so captivating is actually a husky, infectious chuckle that precedes, follows and punctuates everything she says. Her transformation from frumpy Tai Frasier in Clueless to the gorgeous, pocket-size bombshell she is today is so remarkable that I feel compelled to remark on it.
"Well, I should say, Yes, that it was the lighting and clothes and wigs that made me look like a little monkey in Clueless" she says brightly. "But I made that film when I was 15 and had just grown breasts and my shape changed and I didn't know what to do with it." Obviously, she knows now.
When the shoot ends, Murphy changes into her street clothes and, holding her own camera at arm's length, takes pictures of herself with everyone involved. "I have a bladder the size of a sparrow," she tells me before making a stop in the bathroom. Mission accomplished, it's hugs and kisses for the hair and makeup crew. When we finally manage to settle in to eat something at a nearby sidewalk hotspot, she apologizes for the nasality of her speech today and the fact that she'll be breathing through her mouth. "I woke up this morning with sinus congestion, cramps and one other thing that I can't remember," she says, laughing. "Like a little bit of everything icky."
The casual moviegoer might not be aware of Brittany Murphy, though she's delivered a series of stand-out performances in films that ostensibly belong to other stars. Most notably excellent are her clueless character in Clueless, her selfless beauty-pageant contestant in Drop Dead Gorgeous, her poultry-obsessed suicidal oddball in Girl, Interrupted, her virgin in peril in the smart-ass slasher Cherry Falls, her town tart in Summer Catch, her serial seducer in Sidewalks of New York and the sexpot beautician Luanne Platter, whose voice she does on Fox's "King of the Hill."
This fall Murphy has yet another lineup of films that hold promise. She had to get a driving permit to be the best friend of Drew Barrymore in Penny Marshall's teen-pregnancy epic, Riding in Cars with Boys, but Marshall eventually swapped the greenhorn driver with another actress "and I became a passenger." And she plays the girlfriend of Mickey Rourke's crystal-meth cooker in Swedish director Jonas Akerlund's Spun. "No, I've never done crystal meth," she says. "I have a heart murmur type of thing so I can't even take a decongestant."
It's her performance in the Michael Douglas kidnapping thriller, Don't Say a Word, however, that is causing early Oscar buzz. Her character, Elisabeth, who's been living in a mental institution for 10 years, holds a secret number in her long-traumatized brain that can prevent the death of Douglas's daughter. "I'm not a fan of thrillers, they tend to stress me out," she says. "But I thought this one was enjoyable." Murphy is mesmerizing in the role. She's both powerful and vulnerable, acting almost exclusively with her eyes. And there's just enough of Murphy in the character to make her adorable. It seems impossible that a girl who's never attended acting classes can bring off such a difficult part. "Well, on-the-job training's the best kind," Murphy chirps. "It's like learning a foreign language in school versus living in that country."
She dismisses the Oscar talk. "I don't take myself very seriously," she says, "and I don't think along the lines of getting awards. It seems hysterical and preposterous to me that people would talk about an Oscar even before the movie's been released. It's very separate from the life I lead." She stops and thinks. "I'll shut up now before I go into a self-deprecating babble," she adds, laughing.
Is there a boyfriend? "Yes, at this moment, I actually do have one. It's new and lovely." And all she'll say about him is that he's an actor and a musician. "There are only a handful of people who know the nature of our relationship," she says when I press her. "It's like a magical beginning." Then she excuses herself. "I have to pee," she says, getting up from the table. "Do you want a candy cigarette?"
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