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There was a time at the tail end of the 90's when it felt like you couldn't look at a cinema poster, magazine cover, or a red carpet without seeing Leelee Sobieskis' face. 

The young actress was Hollywood's quintessential "It Girl".

She burst onto screens in 1998 with Deep Impact when she was just 15. Barely a year later, she traded banter with Drew Barrymore in the beloved rom-com, Never Been Kissed. Then she was hand-picked by prominent Hollywood filmmaker Stanley Kubrick for the 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut.

Later that year, she took the lead role in the TV miniseries Joan of Arc, which earned her an Emmy and Golden Globe nomination at just 16 years old.

Sobieski's meteoric rise to stardom occurred before she was old enough to legally buy a drink.

Watch: Relive the 90's nostalgia with the official trailer for Never Been Kissed. Post continues below.

Then she disappeared. She closed the door on fame and walked away from the silver screen completely.

Behind the scenes, a different reality was playing out for Sobieski.

The dark side of fame.

Sobieski never actually planned on becoming an actress, per Tribute.

She was born in New York City in 1983 to Jean Sobieski, a French artist and former actor, and Liliane Rudabet Gloria Elsveta, an American screenwriter.

A talent scout spotted Sobieski in the cafeteria of a private New York City school when she was just a child.

Although acting wasn't something she aspired to, she quickly discovered a knack for it.

After booking some commercial work and Hallmark jobs, Sobieski appeared in movies and secured guest spots on successful television shows. 

Leelee Sobieski in Never Been Kissed. Image: 20th Century Fox.

At the premiere for the beloved rom-com. Image: Getty.

With her appearance opposite Tom Cruise, in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Leelee cemented her acting chops in Hollywood.

However, the reality of Sobieski's personal life was complicated. While her friends were worrying about high school exams, the teen was the primary earner for her family.

"I started paying the rent on our house when I was 15," she revealed to Another Mag, "So I had a lot of pressure and things got complicated for me."

Leelee Sobieski in Deep Impact (left) and Joan of Arc (right). Image: Paramount Pictures/CBS.

She was balancing that while navigating an industry that pushed her to grow up far too fast. 

In an industry that routinely treats women's bodies as a commodity, Sobieski said performing romantic and sexual scenes sat uncomfortably with her.

Leelee Sobieski with her parents. Image: Getty.

"Ninety percent of acting roles involve so much sexual stuff with other people, and I don't want to do that," she confessed to Vogue in 2012. "It's such a strange fire to play with... if you're going to walk through fire, there has to be something incredible on the other side."

To Another Mag, she shared that the sexualisation demanded by the film industry was her catalyst for stepping away.

"Things got complicated for me… So when I could, I stopped," she told the publication. "It's kind of a gross industry… I would cry every time I had to kiss somebody; I couldn't stomach it. I would think 'I like this person, so I don't think they should pay me to kiss them,' or 'I don't like this person, so I don't want to kiss them'. Why is my kiss for sale?' It made me feel really cheap.

"I don't know why it's legal for a child to act. It's a crazy double standard, and that's super weird for me. Now that the MeToo movement has come forward, people understand more that it's pretty gross and uncomfortable."

A creative reinvention.

After turning her back on Hollywood, Sobieski began building a new life.

She welcomed her daughter, Louisanna, in 2009 with her partner, Adam Kimmel, a fashion designer. The pair tied the knot in 2010 and welcomed their son, Martin, in 2014, per Hello Mag .

Leelee Sobieski and husband Adam Kimmel. Image: Getty.

Motherhood provided the ultimate clarity for her complicated relationship with Hollywood. 

"I don't want my children to look at Netflix and see me on screen in the arms of someone who's not their dad," she told Another Mag .

In 2012, Sobieski officially retired from acting. 

When asked about her former craft in 2016, her response to Us Weekly at the Chanel Tribeca Artist Dinner in NYC was definitive: "I don't do movie stuff anymore. I am totally an outsider! Just a mum and an outsider."

To the public, it looked like Sobieski had simply retreated into a comfortable, quiet life.

But her creative spirit merely changed mediums.

Leelee Sobieski is now a successful artist. Image: @greenfamilyartfoundation.

As a young girl, Sobieski watched her father paint in their family living room. She told Interview Mag that throughout her acting career, art had been her sanctuary.

She routinely covered the floors and walls of her movie trailers in heavy plastic so she could paint large-scale canvases between takes.

"I always said, 'I don't want to act. I paint'," she told the publication. "I always acted to be able to afford paints. It might sound really weird, but that's what happened. The cards were just dealt to me that way."

Leelee Sobieski's art. Image: @leeleekimmel.

For years, Sobieski worked in total privacy in her Upper East Side studio. She told Interview Magazine she wanted her work to be regarded as completely separate from her past as a celebrity.

"I only wanted to put stuff out there if I was 100 percent confident that I felt good about it," she said.

Her debut solo exhibition, Channels, opened at the Journal Gallery in Brooklyn in 2018 and received rave reviews, with Vogue writing that her work "warrants serious merit".

She has also ventured into virtual reality, using Google Tilt Brush to build three-dimensional "wormholes". She describes these portals as "alien landscapes" of her own mind, per Another Mag .

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She has since been represented by global powerhouse galleries, like Almine Rech, and shown her work in major art capitals from London to Paris and South Korea.

Sobieski recently celebrated her 43rd birthday and is only going from strength to strength.

She's also managed to achieve something exceedingly rare for women who enter the Hollywood machine as a child: complete and total ownership of her life. 

Leelee Sobieski recently turned 42. Image: Instagram/@____s_0_i_l and @gaiarepossi

She's taken the commodification of her youth and literalised it onto canvas.

"It all comes out on the painting," she explained to Interview Mag.

"like it's a vomit of what's going on inside of me and in the world." 

She isn't a relic of 90s nostalgia; she is a contemporary artist reinventing herself on her own terms.

Feature Image: Getty.