Selma Blair's Real Name: Selma Blair Beitner

Quick answer: Selma Blair was born Selma Blair Beitner on June 23, 1972, in Southfield, Michigan. She is known for Cruel Intentions, Legally Blonde, and the Hellboy films. In October 2018 she announced she had multiple sclerosis, and in 2022 she published the memoir Mean Baby (Library of Congress; AP).

Real name and early life

The Library of Congress name authority files her as "Blair, Selma, 1972-," with the citation "birth name, Selma Blair Beitner, b. Jun. 23, 1972 in Southfield, Mich.; actress." It also lists the cross-reference "Beitner, Selma Blair, 1972-." The Associated Press review of her memoir calls her "the Michigan-born Selma Blair Beitner."

Her professional name drops her surname, Beitner, and uses her first and middle names. AP describes her mother, Molly Cooke, as a Detroit-area lawyer and workers' compensation magistrate. Cooke was Blair's role model and confidante and died in 2020.

In Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up (Knopf, 2022), Blair writes candidly about difficult experiences, including alcohol addiction that began in childhood and stays in rehab. AP's review called the book "captivating and unflinching" but also funny and uplifting.

Career highlights

AP sums up her best-known work as "late '90s/early '00s hit films such as Cruel Intentions, Legally Blonde and Hellboy." In Cruel Intentions (1999) she played naive Cecile Caldwell. In Legally Blonde (2001) she was Vivian Kensington, the rival who becomes Elle Woods's ally. In the Hellboy films she was the pyrokinetic Liz Sherman. AP also notes her modeling work, including a stint as a collaborator and muse to designer Karl Lagerfeld.

In a 2022 extract from the memoir published by The Guardian, Blair said she received her MS diagnosis in August 2018, after years of unexplained symptoms, while she was shooting a movie in Atlanta and "dragging from fatigue." She described the diagnosis as a kind of relief after a lifetime of searching for answers: "the story now has a name." She announced it on Instagram on October 20, 2018, while working on a Netflix series, partly to thank the wardrobe designers who had accommodated her symptoms. She wrote that her doctors had urged her not to go public, worried she "wouldn't get work." The 2021 documentary Introducing, Selma Blair follows her life after the diagnosis.

Name notes for searchers

Selma Blair is a stage name built from her given names, Selma and Blair; Beitner is her family surname. Library catalogs cross-reference both forms. Searches for "Selma Beitner" or "Selma Blair Beitner" refer to the same person.