I met Brittany Murphy for about twenty minutes, fourteen years ago.

It was the “Clueless” junket in Los Angeles, and everyone was pretty jazzed about the movie; Amy Heckerling could feel she had a hit, Alicia Silverstone was mildly amused by the whole starlet experience and the rest of the cast — including Paul Rudd, Donald Faison and Breckin Meyer — was rambunctious to the point of giddiness.

What I remember most vividly about Murphy was that she was clearly sick of having rooms  of junketeers asking her what it was like to play “the ugly girl”, but she was doing her best to make it into a joke. She had a big, galumphing laugh and really sharp timing, and she felt like even more of a movie star than Silverstone. She was eighteen years old.

Who would have thought Paul Rudd would be the biggest thing to come out of that movie? And who would have thought Brittany Murphy would be dead at 32?

Can’t this decade end, already?