Thora Birch mini-bio: Birch was born in Los Angeles, California, the eldest child of Jack Birch and Carol Connors. Both her parents (who have managed her career and remain her managers right up to the present day) were former adult film actors and her mother appeared in the notorious pornographic film, Deep Throat. Birch, who has a brother named Bolt Birch, is of Jewish, Nordic, and Italian descent. The family's original surname was "Biersch", coming from her German Jewish ancestors.[2] The name 'Thora' is a feminized form of the name Thor, the God of the Sky and of Thunder in Norse mythology. From an early age, Birch was encouraged by her parents to audition for commercials. She landed several parts representing
companies such as Quaker Oats and Vlasic Pickles. In 1988, she broke in to
acting when landing the role of Molly in the short-lived television series Day By Day
in which she was billed simply as "Thora." That same year she played an important role in the movie Purple People Eater opposite Ned Beatty and Neil Patrick Harris
for which she won a Youth In Film Award for her performance.
Birch's breakthrough role came in 1991 when she was cast as 'tomboy' Billie Pike in the movie Paradise which also starred Don Johnson, Melanie Griffith and Elijah
Wood. To obtain the role, she had to compete with more than 4,000 other young hopefuls who auditioned for it. Birch received enormous praise for her performance
and her career thereafter went from strength to strength.
Thora's ability to portray herself as a young tomboy landed her several parts during
the period 1991-1995, including the role of Dani in Hocus Pocus (1993). Her acting ability moreover continued to attract much praise and she won leading roles in such films as All I Want For Christmas (1991) and Monkey Trouble (1994). She also appeared in two big-budget blockbuster Harrison Ford films, Patriot Games (1992)
and its sequel, Clear and Present Danger (1994).
Birch's performance in the 1995 film Now and Then is generally regarded as one of
her best performances to date. It also starred Gaby Hoffmann, Christina Ricci, Demi Moore and Melanie Griffith. Directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, the film is about four friends who have been so preoccupied with their own lives that they have not seen
one another for some time until the impending birth of one of their babies reunites them. Upon reuniting, they reminisce about events during the summer of 1970 when they were 12 which were ultimately influential in shaping their lives. It was during
that summer, a mixture of both happy and sad events, that they realized that adulthood was fast approaching, that they began to work out what life was about
and what they wished to do with their own lives. They also promised to be there for another, hence the reason why they were reuniting for the birth of the baby. The film,
a female take on the film Stand By Me, was an enormous success and Birch won great critical acclaim for her performance.
By 1996, Thora was one of leading child actresses of her generation. She
consolidated her position with a leading role in the adventure film, Alaska (1996) in which she plays the role of Jessie Barnes who has moved to Alaska with her father (played by Dirk Benedict) and brother after the death of her mother. Her father is a former airline pilot and upon moving to Alaska, he starts earning a living by delivering supplies to small towns in the Alaskan wilderness in his light aircraft. Whilst making a delivery, his plane crashes into a mountainside. Concluding that not enough was
being done to locate him, Jessie and her brother set out on a successful attempt to find him with the help of a baby polar bear. ter guest-starring appearances in the The Outer Limits, Promised Land and Touched By An Angel, Thora took a break from acting for a couple of years. 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. She also was initially cast in the role of Tammy Metzler in the dark-comedy Election, but ended up leaving after only the third day of filming after disagreements with director/writer Alexander Payne. Jessica Campbell was then
given the role of Metzler.
Later in 1999, Birch won enormous 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 Oscar (i.e. Academy
Award) for Best Picture. As Birch was only 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 and they and child labor representatives were on the set
for the shooting of it.
After leading roles in The Smokers (2000), Dungeons & Dragons (2000), and The
Hole (2001), Birch landed the leading role in Ghost World alongside Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi and Brad Renfro. Not only did she win further enormous critical acclaim, but her performance in the film is considered by many to be her
best to date and she was nominated for a Golden Globe for best actress.
Birch's most notable roles since 2001 have been that of Liz Murray in Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story (2003) and April in Slingshot (2005). She also
appeared in Dark Corners (2006) a horror thriller and can be more recently seen in
Train (2008) and Winter of Frozen Dreams (2009). She has stated that her future
goals include directing and has recently begun directing short sketches for comedy
group, The Doomed Planet.
