Thora Birch

Thora Birch (born March 11, 1982) is an American actress. She made her feature film debut with a starring role in Purple People Eater (1988), for which she won a Young Artist Award for "Best Actress Under Nine Years of Age". Birch rose to prominence as a child star during the 1990s through a string of parts in films, including Paradise (1991), Patriot Games (1992), Hocus Pocus (1993), Monkey Trouble (1994), Now and Then (1995), and Alaska (1996). Her breakthrough into adult-oriented roles came with her portrayal of Jane Burnham in American Beauty (1999), for which she was nominated for that year's BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress.

Birch received further acclaim—and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress—for starring as Enid Coleslaw in the cult hit Ghost World (2001), and was nominated for an Emmy Award for her work in the 2003 television film Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story. Her other film credits during the 2000s included Dungeons & Dragons (2000), The Hole (2001), Silver City (2004), and Dark Corners (2006). Birch took a break from acting after producing and starring in the film Petunia (2012). She returned in 2016 and has since appeared in various independent films, such as The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019).

In 2022, Birch made her directorial debut with the Lifetime television film The Gabby Petito Story. She will make her feature directorial debut with an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel Mr. Paradise, making her the first woman to direct an adaptation of Leonard's writings.

Birch was born in Los Angeles, California, to Jack Birch and Carol Connors, ex-pornographic film actors who both appeared in 1972's Deep Throat. She is of German, Scandinavian, French-Canadian and Italian ancestry. Her forename is derived from that of Norse god of thunder and lightning, "Thor", which would have been her name if she had been born a boy. She has a younger brother, Bolt Birch.

Because of their own experience with the entertainment industry, Birch's parents were reluctant to encourage her to act, but were persuaded to show Birch's photograph to talent agents by a babysitter who noticed her imitating commercials. Birch got her first big break at the age of four, when the babysitter accompanied her to a successful audition for a Quaker Oats commercial.

Birch appeared in commercials in the late 1980s for Burger King, California Raisins, Quaker Oats, and Vlasic Pickles. She made her film debut as Molly Johnson in the 1988 science fiction comedy Purple People Eater, for which she received a Young Artist Award in the category of "Best Young Actress Under Nine Years of Age". That same year, she guest-starred in an episode of Doogie Howser, M.D., and was cast in the regular role of Molly on the NBC sitcom Day By Day. The show ran for two seasons and earned Birch a further two Young Artist nominations.

In 1990, Birch was cast in a principal role on Parenthood, a sitcom based on the 1989 film of the same name, which ran for a single season on NBC. Birch played Billie Pike in the 1991 drama Paradise, with Roger Ebert commenting in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times that Birch played the role with "strong, simple charm". She appeared in the festive comedy All I Want for Christmas that same year, playing a girl who schemes to reunite her divorced parents. The film was a moderate financial success, but found an audience on television and home video in subsequent years. She played the daughter of Jack Ryan in the spy thriller Patriot Games (1992), a commercial success which grossed US$178 million at the worldwide box office.

At age 11, Birch starred in the Halloween-set fantasy film Hocus Pocus (1993), playing Dani Dennison, the younger sister of a teenage boy who inadvertently resurrects a trio of witches. Making US$39 million in the U.S. (against a budget of US$28 million), Hocus Pocus was not considered a financial success, but quickly developed a sizeable cult following due to strong home video sales and television re-runs. "I think the most surreal thing is that it keeps getting more popular instead of the other way around", Birch later said, while admitting the experience was "the most amount of fun I've ever had on a set".