Alicia Silverstone Needs No Introduction

On a sunny Monday afternoon in July, Alicia Silverstone texts to say she’s going to be unexpectedly early for our lunch—by thirty minutes to be exact. Naturally, I have a mild panic attack. Though I’m already en route, there’s no way I’ll make it across Los Angeles for the new time. As I type out a quick “be there in 20,” I imagine her already waiting at an empty table, scrolling through her phone, mildly annoyed.

When I arrive at Cafe Gratitude, however, there’s not a bad vibe in sight. The airy dining room of the plant-based restaurant is nearly empty, save for a handful of people gathered around a blonde woman wearing a flowy blue sundress. Everyone, including the waitstaff, is laughing as the woman bounces a tiny, dark-haired baby in her arms. “So sweet,” she coos before handing the baby back to his mom. “Hi,” she says, turning toward me with an easy smile. “Nice to meet you. I’m Alicia.” 

Of course, Silverstone needs no introduction. It’s safe to say that anyone under the age of 50—including me—has her face burned into their mind. And not just her face: her blonde hair, her mannerisms, her natural vocal fry. After all, the 48-year-old actress has been famous with a capital F ever since the iconic Cher Horowitz and her knee-high socks burst onto movie screens in 1995.

“We’ve been celebrating anniversaries for a long time,” Silverstone laughs when I mention Clueless’s upcoming 30th birthday. “Every year feels like a really big deal; it’s become a kind of holiday. Of course, I had no idea. I certainly couldn’t know when I was doing it,” she trails off, a faraway look overtaking her blue eyes. “I didn’t think anything of it other than it was a great role. I was just happy to be there.” 

Happiness is a recurring theme for Silverstone. Over the next two hours, she’ll mention it nearly a half dozen times: How happy she is when she gets to travel for work with her 13-year-old son, Bear, how happy she is to cook and share food from her vegan cookbook The Kind Diet how happy she is to have such a range of interests to focus on. “I feel really, really grateful for how much work I’ve got,” she says. “But sometimes I just want it all to stop—not because I don’t want to do it; I love it—but because I also just want to walk around my garden and pick vegetables and write another cookbook.”

Silverstone likely won’t have the chance to do much of the latter anytime soon. She’s never been busier—and that’s saying a lot. Over the past three decades, she’s appeared in over 80 films and television shows, ranging from comedies to thrillers, including the 1999 rom-com Blast From the Past, the 2018 divorceé sitcom American Woman, the 2023 horror–comedy Perpetrator, and more.

“I guess I’m creative; everything sounds good sometimes,” she says of her desire to constantly explore different genres and characters. In this year’s Pretty Thing, for example, she trades comedy for erotic thriller and swaps her signature blonde for a moody brown to play a wealthy exec involved with a much younger man. “The hair is so good,” she enthuses of the transformation, noting that she’s dabbled with brunette a few times—including during the 2010 Broadway play, Time Stands Still, in which she starred opposite Laura Linney. “I love having dark hair. But as you age, it’s not as easy to maintain.”

Soon, there will be two more identities to add to her ever-growing IMDB page. First up is Fiona, a charming but jaded Los Angeles divorce lawyer on a quest for the truth behind her estranged father’s death for the upcoming Acorn TV original series Irish Blood (out August 11). It was a role Silverstone relished—and not just because she got to spend three months in Ireland shooting or because she also served as one of the show’s executive producers, another hat she wears well. Playing Fiona provided the chance for Silverstone to balance her trademark humor with deeper emotional themes. “It’s a mystery that’s quirky. She’s been completely abandoned and she’s been longing her whole life but trying to be this tough person who doesn’t care, and then it all gets busted open,” she says of her character. “She’s got a lot to process; I think every woman can relate to that.”

Perhaps somewhat less relatable will be the role she plays alongside Emma Stone in the highly anticipated Yorgos Lanthimos film Bugonia (out October 31). While the exact details of Silverstone’s character are still under wraps, you can expect the film to be nothing short of off-the-wall—after all, it’s billed as “black comedy science fiction art house” and centers around a woman (Stone) who is kidnapped by two conspiracy theoricists who suspect her of being an extraterrestrial who secretly plans to destroy the Earth. Besides, Lanthimos, with whom Silverstone worked on the absurdist 2017 psychological horror film The Killing of a Sacred Deer, isn’t exactly known for coloring inside the lines. “Yorgos is a ‘hell yes,’ anywhere, anytime,” Silverstone says of working with the director. “He’s so brilliant, so lovely, so fun. Truly, I will do anything for him.”

That is, if she isn’t busy doing everything else. Aside from the full-time jobs of acting and parenting, she runs the company First Kiss Productions, hosts The Real Heal with Alicia Silverstone podcast, manages the vegan lifestyle blog The Kind Life, and represents PETA as a spokesperson. “The main thing I feel like I’m always doing is reprioritizing, because you have your plan of what you need to target, and then all this new stuff comes at you at all times,” she says when I ask how she balances it all. “It’s sort of my constant, where you’re just like, okay, I know I was supposed to do this, but now, like, how does this fit into this? I always get behind—always. You have to accept you’re gonna fail at something. I don’t believe we can do everything, or at least not well. It’s a myth.”

Despite what she says, it’s easy to get the sense that Silverstone isn’t all that stressed—and not just because she’s the type of person who will cheerily entertain babies in public, as evidenced at the start of our lunch. For someone who has been a household name since her teens, she’s remarkably comfortable in her skin. Literally: She’s never gotten Botox, doesn’t get fillers, and hasn’t undergone any of the surgical enhancements that seem so omnipresent. “I have lines,” she announces, pulling her hair into a messy topknot to give me a clear view of her face. I squint to see what she’s talking about. There’s nothing much. “I don’t know,” she says by way of explaining her minimalist approach to aging. “I’m curious to see what happens. I’d like to be an example [of what that would look like].”

Silverstone says following a plant-based diet, for her, is “critical.” She’s eaten this way since the late 1990s, originally because she “loved animals” and was horrified by the ethical and environmental implications of factory farming. Soon, however, she came to believe the diet was the fountain of youth and beauty as well. “My health, I did not plan for,” she reflects as she picks at her mung-bean omelet with mushrooms. “I could think clearly, feel more, [and] be present. All of a sudden, my nails got really thick and strong. My hair got really thick. My eyes got all white.” I peer across the table to study the whites of her eyes. She’s right: They stand out behind her pupils in a preternaturally clear—almost shocking—shade of white. “This is the one thing in life that I feel so certain about,” she says. “There’s so much to not be certain about, but I am so absolutely certain about this…I feel like it really works with aging well.”

While veganism is her nonnegotiable, Silverstone will confess it’s not realistic to be so strict 100% of the time. She wishes she always had time to take her vitamins, stretch in the morning, cook all her food, and go for a really long walk, but she’s a busy, working mom who travels a lot and enjoys the occasional glass of wine. “There’s a fantasy of my life [and] how I want it to go. On a really great day, I’m meditating, I’m doing yoga, I’m having my hot water first. But that’s just not always in the cards.”

It takes effort to find the balance: “It’s always easy to eat vegan, it’s just not always easy to eat healthy in the way you want to,” she says. A prime example? Her son, who has recently taken over her kitchen after discovering his love of cooking. “It’s like street food; it’s so delicious,” she says of the French fries and faux chicken tacos he’s constantly working to perfect. She laughs, though she’s clearly proud of his burgeoning culinary skills.

And anyway, eating plant-based food is how she stays grounded; it helps her feel all the more in control over her otherwise whiplash-inducing schedule. “It’s just about having a road map to living my most radiant life while also veering right a little or veering left and then coming back,” she explains. “We can always aim for perfection; I’m always trying. But I always go back to plant-based food.”

Not that she doesn’t love a good beauty product as much as the rest of us—she just wants whatever she uses to be free from animal ingredients and animal testing and to “smell delicious and feel good,” too. To that end, her go-tos are Carasoin Cold Fusion Intense Moisturizer, Josh Rosebrook Nutrient Day Cream SPF 30, makeup from Saie Beauty, Zuzu Luxe, and Ilia Beauty, and pretty much anything from the Palm Spring–based nutritionist-crafted The ​Body Deli brand. But “to be honest, this is where I fail probably the most,” she shrugs. “I only have so much time. I want to look my best, but I don’t care enough. And I don’t think anything that you put on is going to do what the inside does—that radiance, that glow, that joy.”

Obvious radiance and joy aside, she must occasionally feel some pressure to conform to Hollywood’s rigid beauty standards. This is Los Angeles, a place where it’s nearly impossible to avoid. By now, Silverstone—who was born in San Francisco—has lived here most of her life. “Of course, it’s in the fabric of this job, and just being a woman and being alive; it’s part of our society and culture,” she acknowledges. “As I age, I’m aware that I don’t look like everybody else. But I don’t lose sleep over it. I don’t prioritize it that much… I’m having too much fun.”

As we finish our lunch, I ask her one last question: How in the world did she reach this refreshing level of unbothered Zen? She shrugs innocently and then leans in with a conspiratorial laugh. “This might sound a bit weird, but I listen to my body; I go into my heart a lot,” she says. Then, she closes her eyes, placing one hand on her chest and the other on her abdomen. “That’s really where I get all my answers. That’s how I know the most important next step. I might not be very good at any of this… I just do the best that I can.”