The Risk of Being an It Girl in Hollywood
Some Actresses Start Big, End Small
Some actors are lucky enough to have a breakthrough role followed with a meteoric rise to fame and a lengthy career. Others ascend to stardom, but have their stars soon fade. Then there are the ones who have that breakthrough role accompanied by press adoration, followed by some other roles, but never anything near the hype surrounding the expected big break.
The 'Bar' is Set High for Piper Perabo
In 2000, Coyote Ugly gave audiences a look at the rowdy watering hole where the fetching female bartenders, coyotes as they’re known in the biz, dance on the bar and spray patrons with water. Piper Perabo, then 23, starred as Violent Sanford, a plucky girl from New Jersey who took a job at the bar to pay rent while trying to make it as a songwriter in New York City. Back then, she was poised to become the proverbial “next big thing.” At least that’s what the media said.
“Ever since she starred as a barmaid and aspiring singer in Coyote Ugly, she has been billed by critics and Hollywood observers as "the next Julia Roberts,’” wrote Jonathan Curiel in a 2002 edition of The San Francisco Chronicle.
Shortly after Coyote Ugly, Perabo’s next film, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle opened but she never hit her stride, although she’s had some successes with the Cheaper by the Dozen movies and the family hit Beverly Hills Chihuahua.
Gretchen Mol Dubbed "It girl" by Vanity Fair
Another actress who didn’t make it to the level of stardom foretold by the press is Gretchen Mol, who starred alongside Matt Damon and Edward Norton in Rounders, a slick film about poker. She was billed as the next potential “It girl” by Vanity Fair in 1998. She went on to be on the TV series Life on Mars and played the title role in 2006’s The Notorious Bettie Page .
Alicia Siverstone's Swift Climb to, and Short Stay at the Top
Perhaps few actresses from the ‘90s enjoyed such a meteoric rise to fame followed by a decline into near-spectacular than Alicia Silverstone.
She starred in The Crush two years before her breakthrough role as Cher, the vain, yet wiser than most, privileged teenager in Clueless. Soon she was the idol of many young girls and the dream for adolescent boys, but her reign at the top of the “It girl” actress ladder was fairly, short-lived, with a role as Batgirl in the debacle Batman and Robin in 1997 and a weight gain hurting her career.
The same year she starred alongside Benicio Del Toro in Excess Baggage, which received a positive review from Roger Ebert, but the slope was slippery and the public lost interest, and while she continued acting fairly steadily over the next few years in Blast From the Past and Love’s Labour’s Lost, she had a three-year hiatus except for some minor projects and then returned to a large audience with the short-lived 2003 show Miss Match.
Her last highly publicized role was in 2005’s Beauty Shop and according to imdb.com, she is co-starring with Carla Cugino and Malin Akerman in the upcoming Elektra Luxx.
Alicia Silverstone
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