Actress Brittany Murphy is finding her range

By Nancy Mills

Detroit-
"Every human has this abundance of feelings, emotions, perspectives and smiles inside of them." says the actress Brittany Murphy.
"It's something I need to share with other people. It's the greatest gift to make a living communicating people's insides on the outside.
"I allow [a character] to take me along for the ride of their life," she adds. "It's not a functional way to live in our society, that's why people end up getting locked up. But to live there for a few months and do my job is freeing and feels really good."
Slowly but surely, Murphy has built a reputation as one of the most versatile performers working in American movies. This year alone, she has played a l5-year-old mom in "Riding in Cars With Boys," a mentally sick teen in "Don't Say a Word," a raucous baseball groupie in "Summer Catch" and a naive waitress in "Sidewalks of New York," which opens Nov. 21.
She just finished playing a stripper and crystal meth-head opposite Mickey Rourke in the upcoming "Spun," and has subsequently turned herself into "a confident woman who knows what she wants out of life and how to get it" in an untitled film starring Eminem; it is now shooting in Detroit.
"She's very different from who I am," says Murphy of this character, who may lack confidence but has never lacked focus.
"I've always seen myself as one of those 'show people.' My earliest memories are wanting and needing to entertain people, like a gypsy traveler goes from place to place, city to city, performing for audiences and reaching people."
Born in Atlanta in 1977 and reared in Edison, NJ., Murphy persuaded her mother to get her an acting manager when she was 12. A year later, they were in Hollywood, and Murphy was working in a TV series, "Drexell's Class."
She has never had an acting lesson. She describes her process as "opening the door and out it flies. I just trust my instincts. I have no regrets about the way I played the roles. Sometimes, I'll have butterflies in my stomach over certain scenes, but I can't stress over it."
Since coming to attention six years ago as the sartorially challenged Tai Fraiser in "Clueless," Murphy has excelled as troubled characters. She was mesmerizing as the chicken-obsessed victim of incest who eventually kills herself in "Girl, Interrupted" and as a casino floozie with skeletons in her closet in "Trixie."

LlFE-ALTERING

In 1997, she honed her craft playing Catherine, a 17- year-old tragically desired by her uncle, in a Broadway production of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge."
"I love performing live because you are your own editor," she says. "In film, I'll do a take one way and then another the complete opposite, so I really never know who my character will end up being until I see the film."
To the shock of many in Hollywood, Murphy reported1y beat out Courtney Love and Emily Watson to win the much-coveted role of Janis Joplin in a stalled biopic about the hard-living rock singer.
"It would be one of my ultimate dreams to play Janis," she says, "but at least I got to play her for nine hours at the audition. It was an all-encompassing, un-believable experience."
Her powerful voice comes from blues and opera singers on her father's side.
Murphy lives in a Hollywood Hills home with her mother, who reared her on her own after getting divorced when Brittany was 2. At the moment, the two are holing up in a Detroit hotel, where Murphy is filming.
"I don't want my mama anywhere else except right next-door to me," Murphy says. "She gives me all the freedom in the world. It's not debiltating or unhealthy. We realize life is short, and we're so grateful to have each other."
The character most like herself, she says, is the sassy, gullible waitress from Iowa in "Sidewalks of New York."
"I've never before sat in a movie theater and seen myself dressed in my own clothes and playing this character that sounds like I do on a day-to-day basis," she says. "It was creepy but good. "I used to insist my characters were nothing like me, , but now I realize they draw from the same resource - me and my emotions. Big chunks of them are me. They're my tears, my laughter."
Murphy's responses to most of the questions put to her are emotional as opposed to coolly professional. Positioning herself in the film industry would not appear to be her main priority.
"I spent a lot of time in New Jersey with family," she volunteers, referring to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 tragedy; "It was a life-altering time. It's helped me gain a greater sense of myself. If you're always living as other people and trying to convince people you're from nowhere, it's easy to forget who you are. My new goal is to learn how to work to live rather than live to work."

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