It's just sooo Hollywood. Brittany Murphy - quirky, 22-year-old sprite and sexy, swampy voice of Luanne on TV's King of the Hill - is singing at her friend's Manhattan wedding. She finishes, and suddenly the head of Paramount Pictures Casting approaches.

"Brittany, do you know why I'm here?" she says. "I'm looking for Janis Joplin, and I've just found her!"

And so Brittany is suddenly playing rock legend Janis in Paramount's high profile, co coming-soon biopic, Piece of My Heart. And while producers wrangle over music rights Brittany "immerses myself in reading and watching tapes, to learn all those little idiosyncrasies of hers". That is, when she's not pumping out back-to-back movies (four in 12 months) like black satire Drop Dead Gorgeous, detective yarn Trixie (opposite Emily Watson), dark serial comedy Cherry Falls, and this month's Winona Ryder-in-mental-peril flick Girl, Interrupted (Brittany plays a sexually abused laxative junkie - "so much fun!").

Originally from New Jersey, aspiring actress Brittany moved to LA aged 13 with her devoted supermom in tow. A couple of lines in Frasier and three low-rent sitcoms were followed by a breakout role in the sleeper smash Clueless ("There were billboards all over LA with my face on them - it was insane! My mom and I just pulled over and screamed!").

Since then, thanks to her emergent white-hot status, Brittany has bought her first LA home and moved her mom in - "It's nice to have a base, but home is really where my mom is!" And when she's not laying down husky Luanne voice tracks ("It's a mixture of Juliet Lewis, Jessica Lange and my own creature"), or hanging out with fellow LA starlet Kirsten Dunst, she can be found at local theatre having a celebratory but potential homicidal epiphany reciting Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues.

"When I did my monologue I was crying - it was just too much. And then when the lights came up, two people had fainted and one person had a seizure!"

That's Brittany Murphy - she can seriously damage your health.

Text: Kevin Maher
Photos: Stephen Simons

All Rights Reserved and copyrighted to The Face Magazine
The Face Magazine, page 112-113, April 2000

I recommend you buy the magazine, it is well worth it just to have your own copy of this picture.

Questions or comments? Mail me at: seareaver@aol.com

Please note: I am not Brittany Murphy, I just run this fan page.