To end the 1990s, Christina Ricci, Kirsten Dunst, and Thora Birch were three of the most in-demand actors. Since then, careers for Ricci and Dunst as actors have had a significant resurgence.
Birch had a good run of films throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, but after that, it seemed as though she gradually vanished into obscurity. But was it because Thora was tired of being in the spotlight, or was it because Hollywood was over Thora?
Background info
Thora Birch was born on March 11th, 1982 in Los Angeles, California to parents Carol Conners and Jack Birch, both well-known from the adult film Deep Throat.
Bolt Birch, an actor and assistant director, is her younger brother. She was raised on the family ranch in East Los Angeles and used an early type of distance learning by completing her high school courses online.
Acting Career
By the time she was four years old, she was a seasoned actor thanks to appearances in Burger King, Quaker Oats, and Vlasic Pickles commercials. By the time she was six, she had secured a role in the sitcom Day by Day in 1988.
Thora won a Young Artist Award for her acting debut in Neil Patrick Harris’ sci-fi family picture Purple People Eater later that same year.
Beginning with her performance as Sally Ryan in the action film Patriot Games starring Harrison Ford, Birch’s career took off in the 1990s.
She would then appear in Hocus Pocus, everyone’s favourite Halloween film, in which she as Dani Dennison, the obnoxious little sister.
Thora would play Sally Ryan once more in the 1994 film Clear and Present Danger.
After appearing in films like Now and Then and Alaska in the middle of the 1990s, Birch began to take on increasingly prominent roles, and by 1999, thanks to the success of the Oscar-winning film American Beauty, Thora had become a well-known name.
Her performance as Jane Burnham in the dark comedy earned her numerous nominations, a SAG award, and other accolades, positioning her career for limitless opportunities.
After a few failures, Birch gained more nominations and accolades for her performance in the black comedy Ghost World in 2001, which also starred Steve Buscemi, Scarlett Johansson, and Brad Renfro.
Thora would choose the independent way, acting in low-budget thrillers and crime dramas throughout the following decade, with a few TV movies and guest appearances thrown in, rather than harnessing the momentum to choose more mainstream, blockbuster-type movies.
Why did Hollywood stop casting her?
Thora had a consistent run up until about 2010, when she noticeably had less jobs on TV or in major motion pictures, even if they weren’t all hits.
Her boss and father, Jack, is the cause of that, which is unfortunate.
Just days before curtain, she was about to make her off-Broadway debut in Dracula when there was a disagreement between her dad and one of the other performers in the play that led to her being fired from the production.
Thora was sacked from the Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick comedy Election in 1999 after just three days owing to disputes between her and the director, so this wouldn’t be the first time she experienced issues on site.
A few years after that incident, Thora’s father once again caused controversy on the set of The Winter of Frozen Dreams when he insisted on having entire control over his then-25-year-old daughter’s sex scenes. It appears that she had a dad-ager issue.
Thora’s Take
Thora claims that while we may have assumed she simply disappeared for a few years, we simply weren’t paying attention.
Before #metoo and the tiniest bit of parity between male and female roles in Hollywood, Thora claimed that she tried to tread the line between bombshell and intelligence but discovered that there weren’t any parts for that kind of female.
Birch claimed that although people tried to steer her in various directions, she didn’t want to hear it and instead chose to steer her career in the direction she desired, which infuriated some people.
What is Thora Birch doing now?
Thora did, in fact, take a small step away to relax and regroup, but she is again keen to show audiences that the power she can command on screen is here to stay.
She has a recurring part as Gamma on the popular zombie series The Walking Dead after playing Emily in the award-winning film The Etruscan Smile in 2018.
She attained her lifelong dream when, in 2022, she took on the director’s chair for the Lifetime film The Gabby Petito Story, in which she also appeared as an actor.
Even if the subject matter wasn’t really enjoyable, it was good to see her cross that off her bucket list after wanting to direct since she was 10 years old.
She starred in the low-budget catastrophe film 13 Minutes in 2021. Alongside Amy Smart and Anne Heche, she made an appearance in the film.
Thora was first a part of the Netflix series Wednesday, which is now, as we all know, a great hit. Tamara Novak, Wednesday’s dorm matron, was cast in her before she had to leave the project and return to the US for personal reasons after filming the scenes.
Additionally, Birch’s inability to appear in Hocus Pocus 2, which will premiere on Disney+ in late 2022, was a recent setback.
Thora had originally intended to appear in the follow-up, but due to scheduling conflicts with another project she was filming, she was unable to make it to the set.
Thora, though, is not allowing anything to stop her comeback. Her current projects include the drama The Midway Point, which is in post-production, and the hilarious comedy Hurricane Bianca: The Roots of All Evil, in which she will play the film’s ultimate villain.
Being Thora without apology has never looked better. We’ll replay our old Birch favourites as we wait for her new productions to air on our TVs.
