In May 2022, Selma Blair released her memoir Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up. In it, she is forthcoming about her alcohol addiction and the many tragic events in her life.
Blair’s first major role was in the hit movie Cruel Intentions in 1999. The movie also helped launch the careers of Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Ryan Phillipe. Blair followed up in another film with Witherspoon, Legally Blonde.
She went on to star in multiple movies and TV series. In 2016 she portrayed Kris Jenner in FX’s American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, and in 2022 she appeared as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars.
In her memoir, Blair writes about her struggles and how she overcame them.
Selma Blair suffered from alcoholism from an early age
Blair writes in Mean Baby that she was just seven years old the first time she got drunk. She was at Passover with her family and drinking Manischewitz. “I got drunk that night. Very drunk. Eventually, I was put in my sister Katie’s bed with her. In the morning, I didn’t remember how I’d gotten there,” she said.
She explained that she began taking, “quick sips whenever my anxiety would alight. I usually barely even got tipsy. I became an expert alcoholic, adept at hiding my secret.”
Her addiction got progressively worse in her teens and twenties, and Blair revealed that she was raped multiple times after binge drinking episodes.
She writes in her memoir, “I made myself small and quiet and waited for it to be over. I wish I could say what happened to me that night was an anomaly, but it wasn’t.” She continued, “I have been raped, multiple times, because I was too drunk to say the words ‘Please. Stop.’ Only that one time was violent. I came out of each event quiet and ashamed.”
Blair has been sober since 2016 and hopes her story will help others.
Selma Blair bit multiple celebrities
Blair says she had a habit of biting other celebrities when she was feeling “overwhelmed” in “social situations”.
One of the first celebrities she bit was Sienna Miller in 2006.
“I grabbed her arm and bit it, playfully, as if it were an apple,” she explained. ““Even as I held her forearm in my mouth I was aghast at myself. “I thought, ‘What have I gotten myself into? Or her? This is horrible behavior.’”
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The Legally Blonde actor was pleasantly surprised by Miller’s reaction when she “kind of screamed, ‘Opa!’ as I do whenever someone breaks a plate. ‘You bit me, didn’t you? You really did’” but “she didn’t shame me. For this, in my book, she will forever be the belle of the ball.”
She also took a bite out of Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane after meeting him at Scarlett Johansson’s home. She explained that she did it because she felt like she wasn’t “bringing anything to the party.”
“I bit him on the hand,” she said. “‘Whoa!’ he yelled. ‘That really hurt.’ It wasn’t a disaster; I didn’t break skin. But I soon hated myself.”
Then there was Kate Moss. Blair and Moss were hanging out in a London hotel suite taking polaroids, and she had the urge to bite the model’s finger. She did, and Moss laughed, so she did it again. “The second time, she did not laugh and exclaimed, ‘That really f***ing hurt!’” Blair wrote.
Blair realized then she was hurting people when she bit them.
Selma Blair’s battle with multiple sclerosis
Blair announced in 2018 that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The Mean Baby author writes that she had been experiencing symptoms for years but they were dismissed as anxiety.
“I was overwhelmed by a sense of relief,” Blair said about getting her diagnosis. “Like the way you feel when an ocean wave breaks right at the shore before taking you under,” she said. “Now I had a map to follow. I had information. A label. This time, one that fit.”
She went public with her diagnosis, against advice from her doctors, because she wanted to help others. The actor hopes to “erase the stigma attached to MS, bring increased awareness to those living with disabilities, and help people who are coping with chronic illnesses.”
She went on to say, “People judge. People dispute your symptoms. People say things can’t be proven. Let me assure you, this stuff is real.”
The Dancing with the Stars contestant made the 2021 documentary Introducing, Selma Blair, which chronicled her life after her diagnosis and a stem-cell transplant she went through in 2019.
She is now in remission, and has said that while she still experiences symptoms, she has “stopped losing abilities”.
