Selma Blair struck a wild pose as she stepped out of the Today show studios in New York City wearing a leopard-print blazer on Oct. 5. What do we know about the gorgeous lady who featured on PEOPLE’s Star Tracks lists yesterday? Let’s delve deeper.
Selma Blair Beitner is an American Actress who is best known for her breakout role in the 1999 movie Cruel Intentions, as well as for roles in movies such as Legally Blonde (2001), The Sweetest Thing (2002), Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008).
In October 2018, Blair revealed she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and has been open on social media about the challenges she has faced.
She documented her journey with the disease in the 2021 documentary Introducing, Selma Blair.
Selma Blair’s early life explored
Selma Blair was born on June 23, 1972 in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan. She is the youngest of four daughters of Molly Ann (née Cooke) and Elliot I. Beitner.
Blair spent a majority of her childhood in Philadelphia. Both of her parents were lawyers as her father was a labor arbitrator and was active in the U.S. Democratic Party until his death in 2012. Her mother died in 2020.
When their parents divorced at a time when Blair was 23, she and her sister Elizabeth officially changed their surname to ‘Blair’.
In her memoir, Blair wrote that, following a concerted effort on the part of her father’s girlfriend to derail her career, she did not speak to her father for 12 years.
Blair attended Hillel Day School in Farmington Hills, and Cranbrook Kingswood in Bloomfield Hills. She then spent two years (1990–1992) studying photography at Kalamazoo College.
At age 21, Blair moved to New York City, where she lived at The Salvation Army. Intending to become a photographer, she attended New York University (NYU), and took acting classes at the Stella Adler Conservatory, the Column Theater, and Stonestreet Studios.
She returned to Michigan, transferred from NYU to the University of Michigan and, in 1994, graduated magna cum laude with a triple major in photography, psychology, and English. She then returned to New York City to pursue a career in the arts.
Married? Kids? What did we find out about her love life?
On January 24, 2004, Blair married writer and producer Ahmet Zappa in Beverly Hills, California.
She filed for divorce from Zappa on June 21, 2006, citing “irreconcilable differences.” The divorce was finalized in December 2006.
Blair has dated actors Jason Schwartzman and David Lyons and, from 2008 to 2010, dated her Kath and Kim co-star Mikey Day.
In 2010, Blair began dating fashion designer Jason Bleick. In July 2011, Blair gave birth to a son, Arthur Saint Bleick, whom she shares with fashion designer Jason Bleick.
In September 2012, they announced that they had separated.
In 2022, Blair and her ex-boyfriend, author Ron Carlson, who she had been seeing since 2017, requested temporary restraining orders against each other, with both claiming physical abuse. The order requests were mutually dismissed.
How far has Blair’s fashion prowess taken her?
Blair is known for her fashion-forward style, and for her frequent radical hairstyle changes. She has lent her image to a number of clothing lines which include Marc Jacobs-Brian Bowen Smith clothing line, Karen Zambos, Martin Margiela, Isaac Mizrahi, Reinaldo Herrera, and Stella McCartney.
She was featured in the 2002 Pirelli Calendar, The New York Times Magazine award-winning photography gallery, “The Selma Blair Witch Project: Fall’s Dark Silhouettes Have a Way of Creeping Up on You” by the art photographer Roger Ballen, at the Palau Robert in Barcelona in 2012.
Blair was also named in Glamour’s list of the 50 Most Glamorous Women of 2008.
In 2010, Blair posed with Demi Moore and Amanda De Cadenet for a spread in Harper’s Bazaar magazine. In 2012, she became the spokesperson for, and first actress to appear on, the “Get Real For Kids” campaign. In the spring of that year, she released SB, a line of handbags and wallets which she designed.
She has appeared on covers and photo spreads of magazines, such as CR Fashion Book, Seventeen, Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, Vogue, Glamour, Rolling Stone, The Lab Magazine, Interview, Dazed & Confused, Hunger, and Elle.
She has also been the face of fashion houses Chanel, Miu Miu and GAP. She presented parts of the collection of Christian Siriano at a celebration of his 10th stage anniversary in Masonic Hall during New York Fashion Week 2018. In 2020, she starred as a judge on a Project Runway special.
Blair has had some health challenges
In October 2018, Blair revealed that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in August of that year.
In a 2023 interview with British Vogue, Blair said that her symptoms had begun to manifest themselves when she was a child, and that her un-diagnosed MS had caused brain damage.
As the condition worsened, she was heavily medicated, developed a dependency on alcohol and attempted suicide.
Blair wrote about her experiences with multiple sclerosis in her memoir, Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up, which was published in May 2022.
How much is Blair’s net worth?
The 51 year-old Selma Blair as of 2023 has a net worth of $6 million (per Celebrity Net Worth).
In 2001, Selma Blair invested $645,000 in a modest West Hollywood home, later selling it for $1.2 million in 2005. Concurrently, she acquired a nearby residence for $1.3 million, eventually selling it for $1.7 million in 2012.