Biography And Filmography:

An attractive, and somewhat wild child actress who started appearing in commercials by the age of five, Thora Birch got her lucky break next to Wilford Brimley in fourteen Quaker Oats commercials, and then with Jimmy Stewart for Campbell's Soup spots. 

Thora was born in Los Angeles, California, the oldest child of Jack and Carol Connors. Both her parents were celebrities in their own right, and accomplished adult film porn actors; her mother appeared in the infamous pornographic film Deep Throat. Birch is of Jewish, Nordic, and Italian lineage. The name Thora is a variation for the name Thor, the God of the Sky and of Thunder in Norse folklore.

The young actress started her professional television and movie career in 1998, on the television sitcom "Day By Day", with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Courtney Thorne-Smith, where a young married couple gives up their high-powered careers to run a daycare center in their home. Her first film performance was in the sci-fi comedy "Purple People Eaters" (1998) with Neil Patrick Harris, about a boy who plays the old song "Purple People Eater" and the creature actually appears. The two then proceed to help an elderly couple who are being evicted by their greedy landlord. She then took a supporting role in the television action drama "Dark Avenger" (1990), and wrapped her year with guest appearances on "Doogie Howser, M.D.", "Married People", and "Amen" with Sherman Hemsley as Deacon Ernest Frye, head of the First Community Church of Philadelphia who is trying to keep everything in his church firmly under control.

She got her big Hollywood break when she took the co-starring role of Billie Pike in the dramatic "Paradise" (1991), with Elijah Wood, Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson who play Lily and Ben Reed, a young couple torn apart by a family tragedy. Her performance won her a Young Artist Award for Best Young Actress Starring in a Motion Picture. Also that year, she was hired and cast in the Holiday family comedy "All I Want For Christmas" (1991), then lent her distinctive voice to the animated short film "The Itsy, Bitsy Spider" (1992). 

Thora then took another high-profile role in the action thriller "Patriot Games" (1992), starring Harrison Ford, a story about a CIA Analyst, Jack Ryan, who interferes with an IRA assassination, and a renegade faction targets him and his family for revenge. The movie was a smash hit and she was now a Hollywood celebrity, and audiences wanted more of the gorgeous and impressive actress.

The following year, Birch started with the family comedy "Hocus Pocus" (1993), starring Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker, in the story that started over 300 years ago, when three witches were sentenced to die in Salem, Massachusetts and a boy was turned into a cat. On Halloween, the witches who fly on vacuum cleaners are back, with their eyes set on immortal life. 

She then took her first headlining and starring role in the family comedy "Monkey Trouble" (1994), the story of Eva, a girl who is feeling left out and ignored after her new baby brother arrives, and nothing is going well for her until she finds a new friend, Dodger, a monkey. 

Another Hollywood blockbuster role followed for the actress, when she again teamed with Harrison Ford in the action thriller "Clear And Present Danger" (1994), where CIA Analyst Jack Ryan is drawn into an illegal war fought by the US government against a Colombian drug cartel. 

Another high profile romantic comedy followed with "Now And Then" (2005), starring Christina Ricci, Rosie O'Donnell, Melanie Griffith, Gaby Hoffmann and Demi Moore, about the summer when four friends make a promise to return anytime they needed each other, twenty years later that time has come. She was again nominated for a Young Artist Award. She then portrayed a teenager looking for her missing father in the adventure "Alaska" (1996). Also that year, she appeared in guest spots on "Monty", "The Outer Limits", "Promised Land" and "Touched by an Angel". 

Another huge Hollywood break came in the role of Jane Burnham in the award winning "American Beauty" (1999), starring  Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, about a man Lester Burnham, who is going through a mid-life-crisis and has become depressed, so he decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation for his daughter's attractive friend. The film was a box-office hit and pulled in an astounding five Oscar Awards and won another eighty-three different awards. 

Reviewers and audiences loved the actor in her next starring role as Enid, the unconventional, somewhat negative, hip young teen and aspiring artist struggling to find herself after high school graduation, in "Ghost World" (2001), also starring Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, and the late Brad Renfro, and based on the graphic black comedy novel. 

She finished the year in the starring role and working with Keira Knightley in the horror mystery thriller "The Hole" (2001), about four teenagers at a British private school who secretly uncover and explore the depths of a sealed underground hole created decades ago as a possible bomb shelter. Starting in 2005, her career really began to take off, with move more high-profile and adult roles.

The next starring role was alongside David Arquette in the romantic comedy "Slingshot" (2005), where the two portrayed cunning and manipulative drifters who venture into Farifield County, Connecticut looking to seduce wealthy and lonely housewives. She then took the lead role in the horror thriller "Dark Corners" (2006), about a troubled young woman, who wakes up one day as a different person - someone who is stalked by creatures. 

She then starred alongside Keith Carradine in the crime thriller "Winter Of Frozen Dreams" (2008), where she plays Barbara Hoffman, a University of Wisconsin science student who is a part-time employee at a local massage parlor - she is also a killer, and all Detective Lulling (Carradine) has to do is prove it. 

Another horror thriller starring role followed in "Train" (2008), set in Europe where a group of young American college athletes unknowingly board a train that becomes a deadly ride. She then starred in the fantasy film "Cavegirl" (2008), where two hundred thousand years ago teenage girls wanted the same as teenage girls do today, teenage boys! But One Cavegirl wasn't into the teenage clubs, teenage music or fashions, she has more important things to do like win wars, and conquer evil. 

The actress then starred in the dramatic "Crossmaglen" (2008), the story of IRA gunner Dermot McGarvey who is a hunted man - by both the British and his own. While on a stakeout he accidentally kills a mother and her two young children, and things begin a downward spiral. 

She wrapped her year starring with Brittany Murphy in the horror thriller "Deadline" (2009), about a screenwriter who travels to an abandoned house to finish a script on time, but a series of strange events lead her to a psychological breakdown.

Watch Thora Birch In The "Train" Movie Trailer

[Home]     [Male Celebrities]     [Female Celebrities]