Chloë Sevigny’s favourite co-star and why they “gelled” so well
Chloë Sevigny has always been the ultimate ‘It Girl’.
Emerging in the 1990s as an emblem of androgynous, alternative cool, rubbing shoulders with figures like Sofia Coppola and Kim Gordon, and even appearing in a Sonic Youth video, Sevigny initially worked as a model and seamstress, dedicating much of her life to fashion and design.
Then, she found herself in Kids, the Harmony Korine-penned drama that remains just as controversial now as it did upon its release in 1995, and her onscreen presence proved to be captivating, where she came across as extremely real and authentic. It wasn’t long before Korine snapped her up for another role, this time in his directorial debut, Gummo, for which she designed the costumes, too, and her appearance in the animal-print swimsuit, paired with bleached eyebrows, is simply iconic.
She has since become a star of both the big and small screen, with credits ranging from Olivier Assayas’ Demonlover and David Fincher’s Zodiac to Mary Harron’s American Psycho and the HBO series Big Love, and she’s not afraid of controversy, either, performing a real blowjob on Vincent Gallo in his film The Brown Bunny.
With her tastes veering towards the subversive and the unconventional, it’s rare you’ll see her in a big blockbuster, preferring to work with genuinely creative and interesting people, even if they have a bit of a reputation for being odd, to say the least. Projects that push boundaries and explore a darker or unusual side to society attract her, which is perhaps why she was so drawn to Big Love, in which she played one of several wives married to a fundamentalist Mormon man.
Ginnifer Goodwin and Jeanne Tripplehorn played the other two wives, while Bill Paxton portrayed their husband, with the show interrogating themes of gender, faith, and society’s response to unconventional living. It was unlike anything Sevigny had done before, but she found her favourite co-star in the process, citing Tripplehorn as someone with whom she just “gelled”.
Talking to Elle, she explained, “We were both really into music. We had a really fun time on set. I used to go and stay at her house. She would just really take care of me. We shot out west, I lived in New York, and she really became like this sister, mother figure, and I’ll always cherish how much she took care of me out there.”
Having someone slightly older like Tripplehorn to guide her certainly helped, because while Sevigny had been appearing in movies since the mid-90s, she was still rather new to the world of TV, and with Big Love, she was suddenly thrust into a production which saw her partake in 53 episodes, all of which were between 45 minutes and an hour. That’s a lot of work, and having someone she felt close to while filming was vital.
Tripplehorn was certainly a better co-star than Christian Bale was in American Psycho, that’s for sure. While Sevigny found a sense of kinship while working on Big Love, when she appeared in Harron’s satirical horror film a few years earlier, she found herself “really intimidated by his process and intimidated by him,” she told Vanity Fair, “It was a really challenging dynamic for me”.
Sometimes, you get lucky and stumble upon a co-star who becomes a close friend, even family, but Hollywood isn’t always so giving, so you really can’t take them for granted.
