Growing up in Darian, CT, Chloe Sevigny was appalled by the mentality of her peers (aspirations: Jeeps/BMWs/Ivy League education), so she would flee to New York City on weekends, finding friends in the skaters who hung out in Washington Square. And this is why, initially, she became famous: approached at age 18 while hanging out with the skater kids by an employee of Sassy magazine to appear alongside the editor on the opening credits of a talk show.

Her star vehicle Kids came about through the "chance meeting" of her skater boyfriend Harmony Korine and veteran photographer Larry Clark. Clark wanted to make a docudrama film about people just like them; Korine wanted to write scripts: and so Kids was born. Before then, Sevingy had no idea what she'd do with her life but thought she'd just as easily stay in the clothes shop where she worked or go back to school.

She followed it up with Trees Lounge, opposite Steve Buscemi and Korine's next project Gummo on which she also served as costume designer. In 1998, she starred in Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco and the following year, in Julien Donkey-Boy (1999), she reunited with Korine in an all-video all-improv film about a schizophrenic and his dysfunctional family that incorporates the rules laid down by the Euro Dogme '95 doctrine. But it was her role in Boys Don't Cry (1999) that earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and her first Oscar nomination in the same category. She finished off the year with A Map of the World, starring Sigourney Weaver and Julianne Moore.