Fast Facts About Actor Chloe Sevigny

Chloë Sevigny grew up in Darien, Connecticut, one of the most affluent suburbs in the country. A Connecticut Post article named it the snobbiest town in Connecticut. But Sevigny claims her home life was a little more bohemian than that of her neighbors. Her father worked in insurance before retiring to become a painter and her mother was a preschool teacher. "It sounds really entitled to say, because obviously it is such a beautiful community, but we didn't grow up as privileged as our surroundings," Sevigny told The New York Times. She always had a job, from babysitting to retail, and on weekends she liked to make the hour-long trek into New York City with her friends. It was there that her entire life would change.

At age 17, Sevigny was spotted at a newsstand in the city by an editor at Sassy magazine who asked if she'd like to model. Sevigny took the gig, and later became an intern for the magazine. Through her connections there, she met Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, who cast her in the band's "Sugar Kane" video. Sevigny also met Harmony Korine in the city, who was working on the movie "Kids" with Larry Clark, and suggested Sevigny be cast as Jennie. But it is not all as random as it sounds. "I knew I wanted to be an actress since I was really young, like kindergarten," Sevigny revealed.

In 2019, Chloë Sevigny debuted her own perfume, Little Flower. According to Régime des Fleurs, Little Flower is a rose scent with notes of black tea, bleeding heart, blackcurrant bud, peony, honeysuckle, and others. It turns out scent is very important to Sevigny, as she explained to Paper magazine, "I feel like fragrance is really emotional and to me, it transcends beauty, or anything else. It's our strongest sense of memory and it's like wearable art. It's almost like fashion to me, more than beauty."

The name Little Flower sounds cute and apt for a celebrity scent, but since this is Chloë Sevigny's perfume, the name has a deeper meaning. The inspiration was a 19^th century French nun who became the Catholic patron saint of flowers. "She was also called 'The Little Flower,' and she died quite young and was very humble," Sevigny said. 

Sevigny didn't just put her name on the bottle, she was very involved in the process of creating the fragrance. The perfume went through over thirty iterations before Sevigny was satisfied with it. "I've always worn rose perfumes, but I think of this as a city rose," Sevigny told Vogue.

Chloë Sevigny has performed in some controversial projects. Her very first foray into acting, the 1995 movie "Kids," is still thought of as one the most controversial films of the '90s. In it, Sevigny plays Jennie, a New York City teenager who contracts HIV the first time she has sex. Sex and drugs pervade the movie, which was written by Harmony Korine (who went on to direct "Gummo" and "Spring Breakers") and directed by Larry Clark. Many of the actors were underaged, and while the film accurately portrayed a specific subset of youth culture, it was shocking for many to see children on screen smoking pot, making out, and speaking frankly about sex.

In 2003 Sevigny appeared in another film that was the subject of much debate, Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny." Gallo also stars in the film, and there is a very divisive scene in which Sevigny's character is shown performing unsimulated oral sex on Gallo's character. There were rumors that Sevigny's agents had dropped her over her participation in the film, but they were untrue. In fact, Sevigny's career actually saw a bit of a boost after the attention "The Brown Bunny" received. "I got my first studio film after that. I'd never been offered a studio film. It was 'Zodiac.' I don't think it really hurt me, necessarily. I mean, it hurt me, in a lot of ways ... Some relationships have had trouble with it. Of course, my mom and I don't talk about it," Sevigny told W.

While Chloë Sevigny lights up the screen in both TV and film, she has taken on roles behind the scenes as well. In 2016, Sevigny made her directorial debut with her short film "Kitty" at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is based on a short story by Paul Bowles, and is about a young girl who dreams of turning into a cat. The film stars Ione Skye, Lee Merriweather, and Edie Yvonne in the titular role. Sevigny shared with People, "There's just a lot that I identified with in this little girl, you know? She's looking at herself in the mirror and hoping to be or wishing to be something that she isn't."

Sevigny went on to direct two more short films, 2017's "Carmen" and 2019's "White Echo." She spoke to Deadline about directing, saying, "It's something I'd been thinking about for a really long time. People had been asking me to do it over the years in video or for a fashion brand. But for my first foray, I wanted to do a pure gesture."

One of Chloë Sevigny's earliest influences was her older brother, Paul. According to a 2011 interview with The Daily News, Sevigny didn't merely look up to Paul, she adored him. "I hero-worshipped him," Sevigny said. "I didn't look up to singers or anything, I didn't have that many icons, but I was really into my brother. He was like the coolest thing on the planet. He was really into skateboarding. He was a hard-core kid."

She also mentions that one of her biggest style inspirations was Paul's high-school girlfriend, a girl with dyed-blue hair and a punk style which was an anomaly in 1990's Darien, Connecticut. "I'd never seen anyone in this town that looked like her before," Sevigny told The New York Times. "I just wanted to be her."

The Sevigny siblings are still close, as their careers tend to run somewhat parallel at times. Paul Sevigny is a DJ, a club owner, and an artist. The afterparty of Chloë Sevigny's May 2022 wedding was held at Paul's Casablanca, which is owned by Paul Sevigny.

Chloë Sevigny and her cool girl persona might seem intimidating at first, but then there is the fact that she has so many friends. It's obvious she likes to support her fellow female artists, and all the better if they're her buddies. In addition to working with Tara Subkoff on her fashion line, Sevigny and Subkoff have worked together on films as well. Sevigny starred in "#Horror," Subkoff's 2015 full-length directorial debut. Sevigny spoke to I-D about the collaboration, saying, "Tara has been a friend for almost 20 years now and we have worked on projects from Imitation of Christ to other short films. I've always believed in her as an artist because she's always wanted to say something more or something bigger; she always has a new perspective or point of view."

In 2022, Sevigny got the opportunity to work with one of her best friends, Natasha Lyonne, on Lyonne's Netflix hit series "Russian Doll." Sevigny played a young version of Lyonne's character's mother in Season 2 of the series. The two women have a 25-year friendship, and that came in handy while working together in such an intimate capacity. "We have this unspoken thing, where if we're just sort of sitting on camera together, there's so much information between us," Lyonne told Entertainment Weekly. She added, "Chloë will touch my hair without me noticing, or just these little things, the way Chloë knows that I need to ash [when smoking], because I'm always ashing on myself. We have a lot of detail between us."

In May of 2020, Chloë Sevigny gave birth to her first child, a son, Vanja Sevigny Mačković. Being pregnant and having a baby during the Covid-19 pandemic was stressful, to say the least, and Sevigny admitted to W, "I would say that my neuroses ... have really amped up because of the small child ... I guess it's not even neuroses at this point, it's just what everybody is doing. It's common."

Another milestone that occurred in 2020 was Sevigny's marriage to gallerist Siniša Mačković. The couple tied the knot in a city hall ceremony in March of that year, but really celebrated their nuptials in May 2022. Sevigny shared a sweet pic on Instagram of her and Mačković on their big day, with the caption, "Yesterday was undoubtedly the greatest day of my life. So blessed to finally share our love and commitment with friends and family. So many people put so much work into making it just perfect, so from the bottom of my bursting heart, thank you."

In 2022 Sevigny, Mačković, and their son were featured on the cover of Cultured Magazine. Sevigny is wearing a casual dress with wooden soled sandals and black socks. She is flanked by her dark-haired husband (who is donning a sheer black dress over his shirt and slacks) and her blonde, curly-haired little boy in a mix of plaids. One might say they look like the coolest little family in the world.