Tuesday, 22 December 2009

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Clueless director: The pressure on Brittany Murphy was awful

Amy Heckerling says 'innocent' Brittany fell under Hollywood pressure to be skinny

Pressure to be skinny: Brittany Murphy

As speculation mounts that anorexia played a part in Brittany Murphy's death at the age of 32, her director in Clueless said the warning signs were there.

'You know, everybody's shaking their heads and going "drugs," of course,' Amy Heckerling tells andthewinneris.blog.com.

'I don't know what was happening on the last movie. I know that, you know, she seemed to go through a change, you know, on Clueless.

'Maybe she felt like she was not the, like, skinny, pretty girl, you know? And then the next few movies she was, you know, thinner, blonde, you know, at MTV Awards and all sorts of things like that, and going out with Eminem and Ashton Kutcher, and, you know, suddenly got more into that whole glamorous scene...

'I think she felt the pressure to become a different sort of commodity to survive in show business, and I think it was awful.'

Brittany was pronounced dead at Cedars Sinai hospital in Los Angeles on Sunday morning after suffering a cardiac arrest.

The full results of an autopsy, carried out yesterday, are not expected for up to six weeks.

Beth_McLoughlin@ipcmedia.com