"I would like to be very, very, very, very old. With all the technology we are inventing and what they are coming up with scientifically, people are having longer lifetimes."
Brittany Anne Murphy was born in Atlanta, Georgia on November 10, 1977. By the time she was just three years old, her parents had already divorced and her father, a member of the Italian mafia, was on his way to prison. Brittany and her mom soon relocated to Edison, New Jersey.
By the time she was a teenager, Murphy was already intent on becoming an actress. Her mother encouraged the dream by relocating the family to Hollywood. It proved to be a smart bet, as Murphy quickly found work. Her first role was in this flashback sequence on the hit comedy Murphy Brown.
From there, she joined the cast of the FOX sit-com Drexell's Class, playing the daughter of series lead Dabney Coleman. Here's a cute clip on YouTube. Her breakthrough role however, was in the 1995 film Clueless, playing transfer student Tai Frasier. It was a box office success, earning $88 million worldwide and projecting Murphy to superstar status.
In 2006, Murphy began dating British screenwriter Simon Monjack. Friends and family became increasingly distrustful of him and were often cautioning Murphy about the relationship. She went ahead and married him anyway however, in a private ceremony in 2007. The couple, joined by Murphy's mother, then moved into a Beverly Hills mansion formerly owned by Brittany Spears and Justin Timberlake.
On the morning of December 20, 2009, paramedics were called to the mansion after Murphy was found unconscious on a bathroom floor. She was transported to Cedars-Sinai Hospital, where she passed away following a cardiac arrest. She was just 32 years old.
On Christmas Eve, she was laid to rest at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. The Associated Press filed this report from the cemetery.
An autopsy cited a number of factors contributing to her death, including pneumonia, anemia, and drug intoxication. Monjack and Murphy's mother publicly contested the autopsy, re-iterating that Murphy had never been a known drug user. Then, just five months later, Monjack was also found dead in the home. Amazingly, his death was also attributed to pneumonia and anemia, leading some to speculate that the house was full of toxic mold. It remains a subject of great debate to this day.
Rest in peace. As if!
Trivia
- If you want to learn more about Brittany Murphy, take a voyage to Amazon. Its all in books.
- Four years after her death, independent lab tests funded by her father discovered the presence of ten heavy metals at levels deemed unsafe by the World Health Organization.
- Murphy was a talented singer as well. In the 1990s, she collaborated with fellow actor Eric Balfour and launched the band Blessed With Soul. You can check out her video for Faster Kill Pussycat on YouTube.
- Speaking of videos, in 2004, MTV followed Murphy to a Blockbuster video store in Manhattan, where she treated viewers to her movie picks, on VHS no less. What did she recommend? Check it out on YouTube.
- Murphy was a devout Christian and patriot, who visited our troops in both Baghdad and Kuwait during the War on Terror.