The 'Clueless' actress discusses struggle during early career and how 'useful' it would have been to have someone help her 'mentally and emotionally' to deal with fame.
- Nov 25, 2023
AceShowbiz - "Clueless" star Elisa Donovan regrets not having anyone help her "mentally and emotionally" with fame and the loss of privacy. The 52-year-old actress received increased attention when she played Amber Mariens in the 1995 teen comedy alongside the likes of Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd, and she quickly realised she had a responsibility to be a good role model to her young audience.
"I feel like that was a positive thing for me and helped me to sort of keep myself grounded. I certainly didn't have anyone to help me prepare for that. I had an agent and a manager back then. but it would have been useful to have someone who helped me mentally and emotionally metabolize how to deal with situations like this," she told Inspired magazine when recalling the first time a group of fans stopped and pointed at her in public.
The "Beverly Hills, 90210" star - who played Ginger LaMonica in four episodes of the teen drama - could see how the intensity of the spotlight affected some of her co-stars. She continued, "Those things exist more now than back then. it was a challenge for sure, but I could also see what the cast of 'Beverly Hills, 90210' had to deal with, to a way larger extent."
"By the time I was on it, the show had been on for several seasons and they were so famous. Every time I went out with any of them, they were hounded at every corner. That was a whole other level. I could see how some of them handled it well, for others it was really difficult. For me, those situations were definitely lessons learned."
Elisa says social media and smartphones have made it "so much more difficult" for celebrities to get privacy now. She added, "The paparazzi and all of that got so much worse later: in the 90s and the early 2000s, when I was really much more in the public eye."
"They were not as aggressive and invasive as they are nowadays. Nobody was following you around in a car and trying to run you over and get your picture. That kind of thing was not happening yet."
"I feel like, for people who really started to become visible in the mid-2000s and later, it had got so much more difficult. Especially now with social media and people having their phones everywhere. It's really a different business now. As a famous person, you really have по privacy."
