Alicia Silverstone thought The Graduate was part of another world -- the world of her parents.

But, as a teen, she did manage to see the Mike Nichols movie with its break-out performance by Dustin Hoffman opposite the steamy Anne Bancroft.

"I saw the film and I don't really remember that much of it," Silverstone confesses.

The 25-year-old actress is checking in on the phone from Baltimore, where she's appearing in the play the movie has spawned. Starring Kathleen Turner and Jason Biggs, it features Silverstone in the Katharine Ross role as Mrs. Robinson's daughter. Broadway-bound, the show is slated for a limited Toronto engagement starting Sunday at the Canon Theatre.

Best known for her performances in Clueless, Batman And Robin and Blast From The Past, Silverstone is surprised to find herself in the role. After all, she turned down the chance to play it in the London production, where the play hit big in the West End.

"When they offered this to me, I thought: 'There's no way in hell I'm going to England for nine months!' and 'Why in hell would I want to be the girl?'," she recalls sheepishly. "I didn't remember her part."

Then producers decided to bring the show to North America.

"They asked me to be in the play," she says simply. "I read the script and it was like: 'Wow this is a really good script and this is a really good part.'"

But there were still hesitations.

"I really didn't want to leave home for nine months," she says, a little plaintively. "Especially with what's going on in the world right now."

But then an acquaintance asked her a pivotal question: "When are you not going to miss your dogs and your friends?

"That's what sold me," she confesses.

Besides, the road involves a whole new group of friends.

"We just hit like a really high point as far as I'm concerned," she says of her evolving relationship with her castmates. "Kathleen and Jason have always had this really witty banter and I was never part of that equation (during rehearsals) -- but since we got to Baltimore, I've been starting to fit in."

She's feeling particularly close to Turner these days.

"She's been so generous," Silverstone insists. "I'm really impressed with her. She's a really loving, caring woman.'

Silverstone says she's always been open to doing theatre, but this is her first major piece of stage work.

"I did do one play in my film career," she recalls. "I played a coked-out lesbian who overdoses on stage in a Jewish Orthodox comedy about suicide. I'm sure it was a deep, meaningful play, but that's all I remember."

"But working with Kenneth Branagh (on the film adaptation of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost) qualifies as theatre," she amends. "If I could work with only one person all of my life, it would be him. I would constantly be challenged."

She's undecided about post-Graduate work, although she's determined to keep her production company (best known for the Toronto-made animation Braceface) percolating.

"The biggest goal in my life is to downsize my life. I've been responsible since I was born and I just really don't want to be that responsible anymore," she says. "I dream of days on end when I wake up and I don't know what to do.

"What I want to do is deepen everything I do. My biggest dream in the world is for everyone to become vegetarian, so there won't be any more suffering."

Now, that's something else she can sink her teeth into.


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