Just when you think you’ve got Alison Brie pegged, she’ll surprise you. Take, for example, the job she had one high school summer, when she worked as a clown. Brie signed on with a sketchy company that rented out bounce houses for children’s parties “and were just trying to get into the clown racket,” says the actress, 33. She took their one-day course, which taught her how to put on makeup and make balloon animals — which, by the way, she can still pull off.
Brie has always been a bit left of center. She grew up in Hollywood with an older sister, a mother in education and a father in entertainment journalism and music. A member of the drama club, Brie was outgoing and eccentric, but she wasn’t a fashion girl. “I was much nerdier, renting independent films at Blockbuster,” she says.
Yet she still made waves with what she wore. “I remember being featured in the yearbook in a fashion piece about people who dressed different. It was the girl with the bright pink hair, and then me, with my loose-fitting cargo pants under a plaid skirt.” That’s not the only time she was a style rebel: “I had my bellybutton pierced from when I was about 15 to 20, and my tongue pierced for a week.” But ultimately, she admits, “I was too nerdy to have a tongue ring, and everybody knew it.”
When we meet at a cafe close to the Hollywood sign, it’s clear Brie has since upped her fashion game. She’s wearing J Brand jeans, a black spaghetti-strap Madewell tank and a pair of brown suede Alexander Wang booties with a cutout in the heel, and carrying a Tory Burch bag. The outfit is a current fave. “I’m not gonna lie,” admits Brie. “I wore this last night to the movies and dinner, and then I just threw it [all] on again today.”
She’s warm and bubbly as she orders a cappuccino, curling one leg up on the banquette in an unexpectedly limber way. “My day job used to be working at yoga studios,” she says, which earned her a lot of free classes. At that time, Brie was doing regional theater and had booked her first TV job in 2006, on “Hannah Montana.”
“I never wanted to get married. I was just like, ‘Well, that’s not my life path, because I’m choosing this crazy lifestyle.’ And then, you know, I fell in love.”
- Alison Brie
Her agents kept sending her out “for a lot of girl-who-gets-killed parts,” but Brie saw more for herself. “I’ve always been a goofy person, but [with work] I took myself more seriously.” Her sincerity led to her breakout role as the prim ’60s housewife Trudy Campbell on “Mad Men” in 2007. As the show thrived, so did Brie, who in 2009 also began playing overachiever Annie Edison on the comedy “Community.” More recently she played yet another buttoned-up role, as the dating-algorithm-obsessed Lucy in the rom-com “How To Be Single.” “The more I’m playing Type A characters,” Brie says, “I become more Type A.”
But she can do other, more flexible things, too. Like make stuff up on the fly. In “Get a Job,” out in late March and co-starring Anna Kendrick and Miles Teller, Brie plays an inappropriate human resources staffer at the company where Teller gets his first job. “There was a lot of improv, and it was very fun,” she says.
And she has every intention of keeping us guessing as to what she’ll do next. “The biggest misconception about me is that I’m very wholesome,” says Brie. “After playing Trudy and Annie back to back, people would say, ‘Oh, you’re like Miss Priss,’ and I’m really not. I had a very wild 20s.” In fact, of all the characters in “How To Be Single,” Brie related most to Rebel Wilson’s crazy Robin.
“There was a period in my life where I was like, ‘The super fun girl!’ If I was going out with you, it was going to be a crazy night,” she says. “Now I’m a lot more mellow.” You can see that assurance in her red-carpet style, which she calls clean and classic, with just a dash of bombshell. “I’m leaning a lot toward form-fitting, structured clothes, because I have boobs,” says the actress, who is a buxom 5-foot-4.
Her favorite designers are Oscar de la Renta, Giambattista Valli, Dior and J. Mendel, but she’s also into more cutting-edge names like David Koma and Cushnie et Ochs. It was a Cushnie et Ochs pastel-green dress she wore to this year’s People’s Choice Awards that earned her a spot on an Elle.com best-dressed list — though it was almost a fashion disaster. Brie’s team hadn’t been able to finish tailoring the dress in time, so it was “a little precarious,” she says. “I was feeling very self-conscious.” She looked up to see Marcia Gay Harden — who plays Brie’s boss in “Get a Job” — “just selling it,” says Brie. “Sexy eyes, selling her dress, looking like a bombshell, and I thought, ‘That’s what I have to do. I’m gonna Marcia Gay Harden my dress!’ It was a total inspiration.”
When it comes to Brie’s everyday wear, she goes for relaxed California style. For spring, she plans to keep working the ’90s trend with bodysuits under high-waisted skirts and her favorite pair of Levi’s.
Brie’s jewelry game is very subtle. In fact, the only piece she’s wearing when we meet is the diamond engagement ring from her fiancé, actor Dave Franco. It’s a round, Irene Neuwirth-designed rose-cut diamond in a rose-gold setting. Brie got engaged to Dave (James Franco’s younger brother) in August, after dating for three years. The fact that the pair was even an item came as a surprise to some fans; Brie says the relationship snuck up on her, too.
“I never wanted to get married,” she says. After all, her parents divorced when she was 5, and her career makes it “hard to see people, hard to maintain commitments.” So she assumed she’d go a different way. “I was just like, ‘Well, that’s not my life path, because I’m choosing this crazy lifestyle.’ And then, you know, I fell in love. So, blah blah blah, amazing. Acting is fulfilling, but it’s also not the only thing.” What she loves most is how much she and Dave laugh together. “You know how ‘there are no bad kissers,’ it’s just all about compatibility?” she asks. “I feel the same way about a sense of humor.”
One thing that’s not funny is her schedule. “I’m a workaholic,” she says. She’s already wrapped “The Headhunter’s Calling,” with Gerard Butler, and “The Disaster Artist,” directed by almost brother-in-law James Franco. She’s in the British costume-drama TV miniseries “Doctor Thorne” by Julian Fellowes. And she’s the co-executive producer of the TV Land show “Teachers.”
Oh, and she also performs with her cover band, Alison Brie and the Girls. She calls it a “loose hobby” she does for fun and the challenge. “Singing really does scare me,” she says. “But I like to do things that scare me,” she says. “I’ll only get better at it if I do it, so let’s do it. Or, let’s have a couple drinks and then let’s do it.”
Brie’s calling on courage — and not just the liquid variety — in her career now, too, as she works to break the molds people see her in. She welcomes this challenge too. “Let’s fight for some stuff, look for something that’s different, and prove to people that I can do that.” By the sound of it, this girl is no longer clowning around.