Zero To Hero: Murphy's Law
Dominic Bloch explores the story of a star in the makingWith the release of Just Married, Brittany Murphy adds yet another mainstream movie to her busily expanding career.
But at the age of 25 with more than 20 film credits to her name, it's time to ask just how this chameleon of an actress achieved her rise to stardom from relative obscurity in such a short space of time.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in Edison, New Jersey; it's fair to say Brittany's childhood was diverse.
Perhaps it was this move that bestowed her with the elasticity, which has enabled her to conquer the prodigious sum of projects for her 25 years.Or maybe it's down to her upbringing, which looks to have unfurled a certain maturity masked by a jovial, seemingly carefree attitude:
Divorce
"My parents divorced when I was a baby. I don't know my biological father and don't want to. It was only ever my mother and me," she says.
"I was a really precocious child. My mother says I was talking before I was a year old and from the time I could walk I was putting on my own little shows."
She insists her mother did not channel her into acting, but rather it was her desire to audition for local musical plays at the age of nine.
"I've actually been making money as an actress since I was 13, when I did a pizza commercial, and the work just kept piling up.
Loved performing
"My mom could see how much I loved performing so she let me go with my agent and a chaperone to L.A."
The rest, as they say, is history. In 1990 she landed her first television role, on the sitcom Blossom, before securing work on many other popular TV series such as Sister, Sister.
Her breakthrough in films came as Tai, the fashion-challenged transfer student whom Alicia Silverstone takes under her wing, in the hit comedy Clueless, and Brittany never looked back.
Success
You might expect success to originate from hard work and Murphy's story will provide no exception. She admits herself to having had no more than three weeks break in the past five years.
But this doesn't go as far as to explain her scene stealing performances in films like Girl, Interrupted. As a mental patient with a strange penchant for storing cooked chickens under her bed, she outshone the already established figures of Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie - no mean feat by any stretch of the imagination.
Brittany built on her performance as the 'chicken lover' two years later playing an institutionalised girl who holds the key to a mystery, opposite Michael Douglas' psychiatrist in Don't Say a Word.
Most actors wait years to work alongside veterans like Douglas and find the prospect somewhat daunting but young Murphy didn't so much as bat an eyelid, more than holding her own in the suspense thriller.
Rumours
Of course, rumoured affairs with high profile co-stars such as the rapper Eminem (during filming of his debut movie 8 Mile) and even Miss Ryder didn't do anything to hurt her career.
But I think the basis for her success is far more simple and can be summed up in one word...talent. Talent goes a long way, further still if you don't have the tag of "diva" that usually comes with it.
Murphy doesn't demand $20m like some of her peers instead choosing to alternate between large, studio films and small independent features. She can also be heard every week in the animated TV comedy King of the Hill, voicing southern belle Luanne.
If there are to be any Golden Globe or Oscar nominations, such superlatives lie in her future, which many in Tinseltown believe to be bright. And she has every intention of proving them right.
Dominic Bloch
