The documentary sheds some light on her transformation, with people close to the actress saying that an agent telling Murphy she was “huggable, but not fuckable” prompted her to lose a great deal of weight. Brittany’s extreme weight loss likely played a role in her death.ĭuring her rise to fame, Murphy was subject to intense scrutiny from the media about her noticeably thinner appearance versus her Clueless days. Here is a rundown of the most explosive revelations from the film.ġ. What Happened, Brittany Murphy? also casts its lens on the culture at large, revealing how Hollywood, the media, and the public were complicit in another promising young woman’s tragic demise. But hindsight gives the film a clear perspective: Monjack, while an insidious force in his wife’s life, was far from the only one to blame for her death. It wasn’t until after her passing that the public realized Brittany had fallen into the grip of her Svengali husband, a British screenwriter and aspiring filmmaker who turned out to be little more than a con man. But not long after their split, her career went into a tailspin, with Brittany booking fewer and fewer high-profile roles amid rumors of drug use and erratic behavior on set, until her untimely death. Soon, she started to land leading-lady roles, while becoming a tabloid mainstay during her relationship with Kutcher. The mystery surrounding Murphy’s passing deepened further when her husband, Simon Monjack, a third-tier Hollywood screenwriter, died of similar causes less than six months later. Her precipitous downfall is the focus of What Happened, Brittany Murphy?, a two-part HBO Max documentary which traces her early successes, self-esteem struggles, and sudden, puzzling death. But just a few years earlier she’d been an It Girl, co-starring in hugely successful films such as Girl, Interrupted 8 Mile Just Married and Uptown Girls, and dating co-stars like Eminem and Ashton Kutcher. The latest famous figure to be reconsidered in this new light is also one of the most tragic: Brittany Murphy, the prodigiously talented breakout star of Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, who was swallowed up by the early-2000s tabloid-industrial complex and then died of pneumonia and anemia at her Hollywood home in 2009, at the age of 32.Īt the time of her death, Murphy was on a career backslide, appearing almost exclusively in slashers and straight-to-video features. In the wake of the #FreeBritney movement and the reassessment of previously reviled cultural figures like Paris Hilton, there has been a full reckoning with the toxicity of early-aughts media and culture - how we publicly policed young female stars’ bodies and life choices, clucking our tongues with faux concern while at the same time using our talons to rip them apart.
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