Movies

Selma Blair (born June 23, 1972) is an American actress and author. She is best known for her roles in Cruel Intentions, Legally Blonde and the Hellboy franchise.

In 2021, Blair starred in Introducing, Selma Blair, a documentary about her life since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Her autobiography, Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up, was published by Knopf in 2022.

Early life
Blair was born in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan, the youngest of four daughters of Molly Ann (née Cooke) and Elliot I. Beitner. Her maternal grandfather was the founder of Penn Fruit and she spent a great deal of her childhood in Philadelphia. Both of her parents were lawyers; 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. Her parents divorced when Blair was 23. Selma 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's father and maternal grandfather were Jewish; her Scottish maternal grandmother, and her mother, were Anglican but Selma and her sisters had a Jewish upbringing and Selma formally converted to Judaism in the second grade; her Hebrew name is 'Bat-Sheva'. 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 then 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.