Brittany Murphy was odd. She was always dogged by rumors of drug use and/or eating disorders. About midway through this decade, just as she was getting lead roles and becoming a marquee actress, her career seemed to take a pretty big turn into nothing. And sadly, she died on Sunday, the 20th of December, 2009.
That’s everything negative I can think to say about Brittany Murphy. Because Brittany Murphy was awesome.
First of all, let’s establish something: outside of Heather O’Rourke (“Carol Anne” from Poltergeist) and Vivian Leigh in Gone With the Wind, no one has managed to deliver a more instantly recognizable line than Brittany in 2001′s Don’t Say a Word.
What makes that such an achievement is that –unlike the other two actresses– she did it in a movie that sucked more ass than a Tijuana stripper. Almost no one actually watched the thing, but we all know that line when we hear it. Yeah, credit the marketing team for featuring it in the trailers, but without her spaced-out phrasing, it would’ve never stuck.
She was also one of the highlights of Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, a movie she came close to stealing at the tender age of fifteen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHyd9mvHLjk
A feat that, again, is made all the more impressive by the fact that she was playing the frumpy “project” girl opposite Paul Rudd, Donald Faison, and Alicia Silverstone in her role of a lifetime.
But by far, Brittany’s greatest work will always be Luanne Platter. There have been plenty of dumb blonds in the history of television and movies, but none were ever so artfully realized by an actress who found the sweetness (and occasional, delightful bitchiness) behind the stupidity. In a show full of cartoon characters that were more real than most flesh-and-blood sitcom automatons, Luanne was a special creation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n84Z8yTIFnE
Peace out, Ms. Murphy.
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