Brittany Murphy is like that other young woman with a similar-sounding first name, in that she seems to be prepared to risk living her life in a goldfish bowl. The only difference between her and Ms Spears is that she’s not as famous — at least, not yet.
At just 26, she has appeared in 28 films, although, so far, she has impressed as “the one to watch” without quite getting to be the star. There is no doubt, however, about her star status with the gossip columnists. She was famously photographed, lips locked with Winona Ryder’s, in a car down a side alley in Beverly Hills. While questions were being asked about her and Ryder, with whom she remained friends after co-starring in the 1999 film Girl, Interrupted, she started a relationship with Eminem. She played his lover in 8 Mile in 2002 and obviously took it the extra mile. So far, then, so sassy, so unpredictable and so Hollywood. But can she take one more step and make the big time in her own right? She — and we — are about to find out.
Murphy is the lead in a big-budget romantic comedy, Little Black Book, with two Oscar-winners, Holly Hunter and Kathy Bates, in support. She was given the power to choose her male lead — she went for Ron Livingston, best known as Jack Berger in Sex and the City — and given a Britney Spears-like fee of about £1.7m. After the so-so success of her first leading roles, in the more modest Just Married last year and Uptown Girls earlier this year, she seems in no doubt about the consequences if she doesn’t make it. “You don’t get more than one big chance in Hollywood,” she says. “Not for a girl like me, anyway.”
The self-deprecating remark says much about Murphy. She’s not one of those smooth, all-conquering twentysomethings: Reese Witherspoon, say, or Sarah Michelle Gellar. She does not have the calculated coolness of Gwyneth Paltrow when she was just getting into her stride. This is a woman who admits she’s from the wrong side of the tracks. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Edison, New Jersey, by her all-sacrificing mother, Sharon, after her father walked out when she was a baby. “There was not a lot of money and no safety net, but my mom struggled and fought for every opportunity I was given,” she says.
She has made the most of those oppor- tunities in eclectic roles. They include playing the clueless Tai Fraiser as second string to Alicia Silverstone in Clueless (1995), a beauty-pageant contestant in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), a virgin in danger in Cherry Falls (2000), the town tart in Summer Catch (2001), a mental patient who can save the daughter of Michael Douglas in Don’t Say a Word (2001), Drew Barrymore’s best friend in Riding in Cars with Boys (2001) and a serial seducer in Sidewalks of New York (2001). If it’s a breathless list, then Murphy, a 5ft 1in whirlwind of moods and conversation, talks at an even faster pace.
Her waspish tongue has already landed her in trouble. It happened on the Late Show with David Letterman last year, when he asked her about one of her exes, the actor Ashton Kutcher, who had started a relationship with the much older Demi Moore. “I suppose the crux of their relationship is that, to him, age does not matter and, to her, size does not matter,” she said, with a shriek of laughter. “My trouble is that I talk first and think later,” she cheerfully admits.
I have already had evidence of this. We met for the first time a few months ago in London, when she revealed a surprise engagement to her 38-year-old Hollywood agent, Jeff Kwatinetz. His heavyweight client list includes Adrien Brody, who became the youngest man to win a best-actor Oscar for the 2002 film The Pianist. “Jeff is the love of my life,” she declared. “I know that I will be married to one of the most romantic men in the world.” That day, her tiny blonde frame was tanned from a recent holiday in Hawaii, and she seemed full of sparkly energy. Fast-forward to the present in New York. Her pale skin looks wan and her dark eyes are sad. The engagement is off. Kwatinetz admitted that he was still holding a torch for his old flame, Michelle Dupont, who is now dating his client, Brody. Only in Hollywood, eh? “It was the biggest shock of my life,” Murphy tells me. “He told me he could not commit to us as a couple and did not want to be unfair to me by staying in our engagement. What can I say, other than that I am nursing a broken heart.”
What indeed, apart from the fact that most Hollywood-based actresses would sooner run naked the length of Sunset Strip than admit to being dumped. During our two meetings, I get the impression that Murphy wears her heart not so much on her sleeve but fixed on stilts above her forehead, in neon. “I read everything that is written about me,” she says, guilelessly. “All the bad reviews, all the bad things that are said and all the bad reports. I’ve read the most outrageous things about myself in certain magazines. Yet, if I have anything to tell, I tell it. I am not trying to hide anything.”
Just for the record, she says, there have been only five lovers in her life — “and I was in love with them all”. Eminem, whom she calls by his real name, Marshall Mathers, “was special, but not a long-term relationship”. Kutcher was “sweet — I did not mean to offend him”. And Ryder? “If I was attracted to women, Noni would be right up there,” she says. “That photograph was great — but I’m straight.”
She now lives with her mother, who brought her to Los Angeles at the age of 13 to pursue her acting ambitions. They have an upstairs-downstairs arrangement in a luxurious home. She insists, despite an image to the contrary, that she is more of a stay-at-home girl than a party animal. “I have just been listed as the No 2 party person in one magazine — and Colin Farrell was No 1,” she says, with exasperation. “Yet every photograph taken of me was in a working situation. Two were of me filming and the rest were all at my own premieres.”
As Little Black Book is her sixth movie in 18 months, there was plenty to choose from. “The trouble is,” says Murphy, “it looks as if I am out all the time. It honestly does not interest me to be part of the big social scene. I have always been like that, and it’s a running joke with my friends and family that I am written about in this way.”
Does Murphy protest too much? It seems not. A quick chat with Little Black Book’s producers, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas and Deborah Schindler, prompts remarks that their star should perhaps get out more. “She works like nobody I’ve ever seen,” says Goldsmith-Thomas. “Her only danger is that perhaps she works too much and too hard. For someone so young, she picks up on every little detail and is always dedicated to what she does.” A straightforward choice, then, as the lead for her movie? “Definitely — we know what it takes and she has it.”
It seems that Goldsmith-Thomas has a knack of delivering films with women leads who have international appeal. Her first was Maid in Manhattan, starring Jennifer Lopez, a No 1 in America and a dozen other countries. Her second, Mona Lisa Smile, an ensemble piece set in a 1950s women’s college, with Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Julia Stiles and Marcia Gay Harden, surprised cynical reviewers by grossing more than £100m worldwide. And this one? “No young woman will resist it,” says Goldsmith-Thomas confidently. “It is a matter of getting the right script and the right leading lady. We’ve found both with this one.”
In the film, directed by Britain’s Nick Hurran (Virtual Sexuality and Girls’ Night), Murphy plays Stacy Holt, an upwardly mobile associate producer for a dragon- like daytime-show hostess, played by Bates. Away from the studios, Murphy’s char- acter is suffering from insecurity in her relationship with her boyfriend, played by Livingston. She secretly snoops into his “little black book” — in this case, a handheld computer — to learn about his ex-girlfriends.
To her horror, she discovers that there are three self- confident former lovers: a model, a gynaecologist and a chef. She then uses her influence as a television executive to pretend to interview them as prospective subjects for the show. Apart from a sub-plot about the wisdom of reality television, the only real issues in the film (we are talking lightweight romance here) are, in no particular order: is it wise to delve, should some secrets remain secret, and why does it seem that women want to know about the past more than men? (Also, is this true?) Murphy swears she has never snooped herself, though, with typical frankness, she admits: “I was the only one of the cast who said that — and Holly Hunter called me a liar for saying so.” But she accepts that, thanks to her eventful love life, she is perfectly qualified for the role. “I had never been too keen to do the usual boy-meets-girl story,” she says. “I was drawn to the reality of this, the flawed characters and the sense of all-round betrayal. My character is a good, sweet person — a normal, cool girl.
I believe every girl has those questions going on inside. She is probably the most normal kind of girl I’ve ever played.”
Given her roles so far, that is probably true. Even before she became well known on screen, Murphy had a reputation for being able to deliver the quirky and unexpected. She had registered with international television audiences during the late 1990s as the gravel voice of the well-meaning, white-trash Luanne in King of the Hill. Yet, whether a voice off screen or a face to watch, Murphy has changed her appearance with chameleon-like regularity. Her hair has changed, too — brown, black, fair, blonde — so that even she is not sure what its natural colour is any more. “But when I changed my hair to blonde, that helped me get more parts,” she says.
Whatever the colour, Murphy looks set to strike more gold in the wake of Little Black Book. She is lined up for three more movies and has just completed Sin City, opposite Benicio Del Toro. She also claims an unashamed calling to be more than just another
actress. “I always had an urge to be part of show business and entertain people,” she says. “I have never wanted to do anything else but perform.”
Little Black Book opens on Friday
