The baby face: Thora Birch
Thora Birch (born March 11, 1982) is an American actress. She got her first role at the age of 6 in the short-lived sitcom Day By Day (1988). That performance was followed by an appearance in the motion picture Purple People Eater (1988), for which she received a Young Artist Award for “Best Young Actress Under Nine Years of Age”. Birch’s profile was raised significantly with major parts in films such as All I Want for Christmas (1991), Patriot Games (1992), Hocus Pocus (1993), Monkey Trouble (1994), Now and Then (1995), and Alaska (1996).Her breakthrough role came in 1999 with the Academy Award winning film, American Beauty. Her performance was well received by both critics and audience and brought Birch to an international recognition. She later played the lead role in Ghost World (2001) for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. She has since appeared in independent films such as Dark Corners (2006), Train (2008) and Winter of Frozen Dreams (2009).
Although her pre-adolescent years witnessed roles in such films as Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, Thora didn’t really hit it big until her role as Jane Burnham in 1999’s American Beauty. She delved back into teenage turmoil again in 2001, taking on the lead role of Enid in the comic book adaptation, Ghost World.The scene in American Beauty where Thora stands topless in front of her window is a great visual metaphor for our panel’s take on her sexiness: here’s a girl brashly flaunting her breasts, but any of this scene’s erotic effects are completely neutralized by the serious context that surrounds it. Yes, Thora’s marks in this category again fall victim to her somewhat stuffy character.This girl has a marvelous body, a unique face and stunning green eyes, but it doesn’t count for squat, when accompanying someone who seems nonchalant and unexciting.
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After knocking everyone’s socks off in American Beauty, Thora took on a role in the 2000 flop Dungeons and Dragons, and it appeared as if she was ready to meld back into the woodwork. A year later, she wiped the grins off the cynics’ faces with her brilliant performance in Ghost World, one which earned her a Golden Globe nomination, a Best Actress Award at the Seattle Film Festival and the title of “Actress of the Year” from both the Toronto and San Diego Film Critics Societies.This wasn’t the first time that Thora had to bounce back from a bad break. In the late ’90s, she discovered that having Patriot Games, Now and Then, Paradise, and Clear and Present Danger under her belt didn’t save her from a casting slump, and was forced into a three-year acting hiatus. While such a blow to the ego may have sent any other 14-year-old starlet careening into a trust fund-supported drug habit, Thora persisted, and has managed to nurture a fairly remarkable career since.The sporadic success that Thora has experienced thus far might account for the fact that although most people will recognize her name, very few will be able to put a face to it. Providing that Thora doesn’t allow her producing aspirations to get in the way of potential roles, her visibility status could change dramatically very soon. In 1996, she landed a leading role in the adventure film, Alaska (1996). After guest-starring appearances in The Outer Limits, Promised Land, and Touched by an Angel, Birch took a break from acting. In 1999, she returned in the made-for-TV movie Night Ride Home and also took a small uncredited role in the Natalie Portman film Anywhere but Here.Later in 1999, Birch won critical praise playing the role of Jane Burnham in American Beauty and was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award. The movie itself went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
As Birch was 16 at the time she made the film, and thus classified as a minor in the United States, her parents had to approve her brief topless scene in the movie. They and child labor representatives were on the set for the shooting of the scene.After supporting roles in The Smokers (2000; where Birch was called “a scene-stealer” by The Hollywood Reporter) and Dungeons & Dragons (2000), she landed the lead role alongside Keira Knightley in the horror movie The Hole (2001). The film was released in the cinema in the UK, and went direct-to-video in the US almost two years later and gained divided reviews. BBC.co.uk wrote: “Given that she has a much leaner role than the one she enjoyed in “American Beauty”, the qualities which made her flourish in that multi-Oscar-winner are still abundantly clear”.Birch landed the leading role in Ghost World (2001), alongside Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, and Brad Renfro. Her performances gained positive response from film critics. In his review for The New York Times, A. O. Scott praised her: “Thora Birch, whose performance as Lester Burnham’s alienated daughter was the best thing about American Beauty, plays a similar character here, with even more intelligence and restraint”. In his Chicago Reader review, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “Birch makes the character an uncanny encapsulation of adolescent agonies without ever romanticizing or sentimentalizing her attitudes, and Clowes and Zwigoff never allow us to patronize her”. However, in his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris disliked Birch’s character of Enid and remarked: “I found Enid smug, complacent, cruel, deceitful, thoughtless, malicious and disloyal”. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance.
Birch played Liz Murray in the made-for-TV movie Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story (2003), for which she received an Emmy nomination. The next year, she appeared as Karen in Silver City (2004), which after premiering at that year’s Cannes Film Festival, received a mixed reception. She later, in 2006, starred in the low-budget horror movie Dark Corners. The film is about a troubled young woman (played by Birch) who wakes up one day as a different person – someone who is stalked by creatures. Tony Sullivan, for Eyeforfilm.co.uk, found Birch “convincing as the two halves of this split personality”. She also had the leading role in the 2008 slasher Train.She starred alongside Brittany Murphy in the psychological thriller Deadline. The film first premiered directly-to-video in October 2009 in the U.K. before being released in December in the United States. In the same year, she starred in the mystery motion picture Winter of Frozen Dreams. A controversy during filming involving Birch’s father and his forced presence during Birch’s taping of a sex scene for the movie made tabloid headlines. In January 2010, Birch played Sidney Bloom in the Lifetime movie, The Pregnancy Pact.Birch was cast and scheduled to make her American stage debut in the off Broadway revival of Dracula, but was fired for reasons apparently involving her father’s interference four days before the show’s first performance. She appeared as the lead character in the Petunia, which was released in 2013. About the motion picture, Birch said: “I think it’s just something that’s a little bit different from your standard summer fare. It’s a little bit more intimate. It’s also a very modern tale. I think it’s actually honest.”
