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| Wednesday, June 24, 1998 New maturity for Sevigny By LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun NEW YORK -- In just three years, Chloe Sevigny has graduated from New York street kid to professional actress. In 1995 in Larry Clark's controversial drama Kids, Sevigny played a teen who contracts HIV. This Friday in Whit Stillman's 1980s retro flick The Last Days of Disco, she plays an apprentice book editor who spends her nights club-hopping in New York's trendy discos. "Kids had an enormous impact on teens. I still get street kids coming up and hugging me, especially HIV kids. I had to tell them it was just a movie." In reality, Kids was much more than just a movie for Sevigny. She was born and raised in the upscale community of Darien, Connecticut, but during her final two years of high school she spent every weekend in New York. "Like so many teens, I gravitated to Washington Park. I was totally overwhelmed by the people I met." One of these people was Harmony Korine, who would eventually write the script for Kids. "I was dating a friend of Harmony's. He was hanging around all of us collecting material for the movie. He based the girl I eventually played on me," recalls Sevigny who turned 22 this year. Back then Sevigny looked nothing like she does today. "I had a nose ring and shaved pink hair. My parents were pretty liberal but when I pierced my nose, they kicked me out of the house for a couple of days." At 17, Sevigny moved to New York and moved into a loft apartment with six other people. "My space was a broom closet," recalls Sevigny, who now lives with Korine. "Harmony is writing a new movie called The Crack Up at the Race Riots and there's a cameo role in it for me. I'll be playing a pregnant teenager." It's another in a string of crisis roles for Sevigny, who played a seductive teenager in Steve Buscemi's Trees Lounge. In Last Days of Disco, her character contracts a venereal disease from a one-night stand she meets in a disco. "I guess I just have a victim kind of face." Sevigny is too young to have experienced the disco age but she can empathize with her character. "When I first came to New York, I was caught up in the club scene. Most of my roommates worked at after-hours clubs. I got in free and got free drinks. "It was a good thing I was working as a seamstress for a friend because she let me set my own hours so I could party all night and sleep in." Once again, Sevigny says friends from that period of her life wouldn't recognize her today. "At that stage of my life I was into androgyny. I looked and dressed like a boy. Lots of people thought I was. "I really miss those days. I had such a great carefree time. Acting has put a lot of responsibility on my shoulders." When she's not starring in a film, Sevigny tries to get work as a costume designer or wardrobe mistress. "I did the costume designs for Gummo. I love doing costumes but it's harder to get those jobs than acting ones." After she finished shooting Last Days of Disco, Sevigny designed and made the costumes for the new Sonic Youth video called Sunday, which features Macaulay Culkin and his fiancee Rachel Milner. "They're so much in love that it restores your own faith in love. Rachel is starring in The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway. Macaulay goes to every performance. "Harmony had met Macaulay so when Sonic Youth asked Harmony to direct their video he called up Macualay and inked the deal." |
| june 24, 1998 |
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