When Brittany Murphy auditioned for the part of Tai in Clueless, she immediately stood out from the crowd.
“We saw a lot of people for the part of Tai, and I felt like everybody was kind of acting it as opposed to just feeling it. And when Brittany came in, she was just genuine,” the film’s writer and director, Amy Heckerling, recalled in the new HBO Max documentary What Happened, Brittany Murphy?. “She just felt like a sweet girl who kind of didn’t fit in with the others and was just trying and being nice but, like, was lost in this world and that was exactly what I was looking for.”
Of course, Murphy got the gig. The 1995 movie was a huge success and ended up being a breakout role for the star. Murphy went on to act in a number of other films, including Girl, interrupted, 8 Mile, Just Married and Uptown Girls. She also did voiceover work for the TV show King of the Hill.
