At the climax of her new film, “Lizzie,” about the infamous suspected murderer Lizzie Borden, Chloë Sevigny strips naked and thrusts an ax into her stepmother’s skull.
“I just wanted you to see her in her all-female form and be confronted by that,” Sevigny, who also produced the movie, tells The Post. “It’s about her just shedding the corsets that represent all of these social restraints, and going carnal.”
In Sevigny’s version, Borden is oppressed, living under the thumb of her sadistic, tyrannical father. She’s also sexually repressed, harboring feelings for the family’s meek Irish immigrant servant Bridget, played by Kristen Stewart.
Sevigny says that playing the scene in the nude helped drive home the idea that the murders, while utterly depraved, helped to liberate Lizzie: “At first, Lizzie can’t believe that she’s actually doing it. But then she’s also enjoying it, and it becomes this sexual, cathartic release.” It’s not even close to Sevigny’s most provocative moment on-screen.
“Oh God, my poor mother,” jokes the 43-year-old husky-voiced actress of her boundary-pushing body of work. Sevigny, who made her acting debut as a hard-partying NYC teen in 1995’s “Kids,” was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in “Boys Don’t Cry,” as the big-hearted girlfriend of a transgender man, based on the story of real-life hate crime victim Brandon Teena. But it was her role in the 2003 art film “The Brown Bunny” — in which she notoriously performed oral sex on director and co-star Vincent Gallo — that shocked audiences the most.
Sevigny says “the sex stuff” doesn’t bother her: She’s much more concerned about being involved with any project that glamorizes violence. “Lizzie” doesn’t, she contends. “Me and Kristen are naked, but no, it’s not glamorous,” she says. “We’re cowering and crying and crazy.”
As for her mom, Janine, Sevigny says she’s unfazed by her decision to play the parricidal Borden. “My mother is so supportive,” she says. “I think that’s part of the reason why I feel like I can be so risky in my work, because I have such a strong base.” (Her only sibling, Paul, runs NYC nightclubs; her father died in 1996.)
Raised in suburban Connecticut, Sevigny says she was “not your average child,” and that she went through what she calls a “goth-y period … wearing the striped stockings and Doc Martens and hanging out with the AV kids.”
Still, she says the perception of her as a chilly, mysterious hipster — which originated with Jay McInerney’s 1994 New Yorker profile, anointing her an inscrutable “It Girl” — isn’t entirely accurate.
“People would be surprised that I’m pretty goofy,” the Indie Queen says. “I’ve dated boys where they’re like, ‘Oh my God, just stop.’ And I’m like, ‘Sorry, I’m not so cool.’”
She says her “animated” personality actually inspired the writers on HBO’s “Big Love,” about a polygamous Mormon family, to give her glowering character, second wife Nicolette Grant, a sharper sense of humor.
“The writers got to know me as a person,” says Sevigny, “and I started getting all the funny lines.”
Sevigny’s passion for her work is matched only by her passion for her adopted hometown. She’s lived in New York City for well over two decades — which is why she feels she can be critical when it falls short of her standards.
“I’m having a real weird time with the city right now,” the West Village resident admits. “I mean, where are the weirdos? I’m not a fair-weather fan, but it just seems pretty douche-y out there.”
In that case, would she jump on the West Coast trend and move to Los Angeles?
“Never,” she says.