NEW YORK – Alicia Silverstone came to fame in the 1990s, long before the barrage of Instagram comments, TikTok algorithms and YouTube rabbit holes. And she acknowledges that she "can't imagine" what it would be like to start her career in this day and age. But there's one part of Silverstone's origin that the actress isn't sentimental about.

"They're kinder to people now, aren't they?" Silverstone, 48, ponders. "(The media) used to be able to just rip a woman apart. Now you would not be allowed to do that."

The actress doesn't see a lot of stories like the ones written about her in the '90s. There was the 1995 Rolling Stone profile that called Silverstone an actress "whom lots of men want to sleep with" (she was 18). Then there was the obsessive attention paid to her weight while filming 1997's "Batman & Robin."

These days, "people would've come to my rescue, right?" she adds. "In any given moment, there's a group of people who have things to say, and then the other people come and they smash (the negative comments) down. Before, we didn't have that."

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