The Re-Invention of Tara Reid

variety.com:

K.J. Yossman When asked what advice she would give her 20-year-old self, Tara Reid barely skips a beat: “Stay home.” Reid laughs, but it’s a laugh that feels loaded.It was after her breakout success in turn-of-the-millennia films such as “The Big Lebowski” and “American Pie” that Reid found herself at the center of rumors about her partying.

By the mid-aughts, she had become a tabloid staple alongside other women thrust into the public eye, such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Monica Lewinsky, their lives and bodies endlessly dissected on the then-still nascent internet.“There was a part of me that kind of got circled in that circle,” Reid acknowledges. “[But] I never got arrested, never did a sex tape, never did anything really wrong except have a good time.” This was an era before celebrities had social media to set the record straight, and Reid found the rumors difficult to shake.

She admits, in an interview with Variety via Zoom, the coverage was hurtful — “You go home and cry a lot” — but bats away any opportunity to indulge in self-pity.

Asked if she feels she was treated unfairly by the media, for example, Reid replies: “I think I was misunderstood.” (When pressed, she confirms she’s never received an apology from blogger Perez Hilton, who was one of her most vocal critics, adding: “I don’t really care to get one from him, to be honest.”)Despite the negative reports, and the collateral damage they possibly did to her career, Reid has worked consistently over the last three decades; on her IMDb page there is barely a year that’s gone by without appearing in one project or another.