“What [being in love] does for your spirit—it’s nothing to take lightly,” she says. “It colors everything. I still believe if I’m just true to myself, that person will come into my life one day.” And moreover, she adds, “I think I deserve it and think I’m in a great place to show up as the best version of me. It's the first time I have hope. And I could have never said that in my life before.”
She has other ambitions too. She’s embraced disability activism by working with the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America and the American Association of People with Disabilities. She’s also developed friendships with people such as Andraéa Lavant, a disability-inclusion specialist who consults with brands and on movie sets. But the work has also forced her to confront the career she more or less left behind. “I had to realize I do love acting,” Blair says. “I really would love an amazing director to ever think there’s something for me.” She has been experiencing “all those little-girl things you feel when you first come to Hollywood”—the dreams, the intentions. “I still feel like I never really hit my stride with acting because after Hellboy I was so sick that I really stepped away. And because I wasn't a huge star, no one came looking.”
“I do wonder, practically,” she says, no doubt thinking of the cane and the service dog and the lilt in her voice. But she has noticed that she deals with less dysphonia if she knows exactly what she wants to say. She could memorize lines, she thinks.
“I think that’s the key with everything,” she says. “Really get comfortable with yourself and it doesn’t matter if you falter, because you know where to pick yourself up again.” She is finding her footing, she continues. “I have such a fucking determination.”
The beauty of this particular moment, however, is her knowledge that embracing the old parts of herself doesn’t mean renouncing her new reality. In 2022 she also signed on as chief creative officer of Guide Beauty, which creates accessible beauty tools. And, a well-documented clotheshorse, Blair has become a QVC brand ambassador and launched an accessible (in every sense) collection in collaboration with Isaac Mizrahi. The line is a natural fit for Blair, who can wax poetic about a particular vintage Schiaparelli dress in her closet. The new clothes incorporate access-oriented elements like magnetic closures and pants fitted for wheelchair users. She tells me she is in love with what she and Mizrahi have made. “Disability does not seem escapist,” she says. “But I love clothes. I love pretty people doing pretty things.”
Doesn’t the disability community deserve fashion with a capital F? “How do we do the things that are the things we talk about with each other every day?” she says. “That’s the light stuff.” She sees it as her task to “fight for the lighter things for people too.” It’s not, “Oh, clothes, whatever,” she says. “It’s like, No, that’s how I feel comfortable. I love that stuff.”
