Thora Birch Biography, Age, Height, Actor, Movies, TV Shows, Awards | Nomination, Walking Dead, Mother
Thora Birch Biography | Thora Birch Wiki
Thora Birch is an American actress and producer. She made her first film debut in Purple People Eater (1988), for which she won a Young Artist Award for “Best Young Actress Under Nine Years of Age”, and rose to prominence as a child star with appearances 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 when she played Jane Burnham in the highly acclaimed film American Beauty, for which she earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She then starred as Enid in the cult hit Ghost World (2001), earning a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Actress.
In 2003, she received an Emmy Award nomination for playing the title role in Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story. Her other films include Dungeons & Dragons (2000), The Hole (2001), Silver City (2004), Dark Corners (2006), Winter of Frozen Dreams (2009), and Petunia (2012).
After taking a break from acting, Birch resumed her career in 2016 and has since starred in several independent films.[4] It was announced at 2019 SDCC that Birch will next star as Gamma on season 10 of The Walking Dead.
Thora Birch Age | Thora Birch Height
Thora Birch is a 37 years old actress and producer born on March 11, 1982, in Los Angeles, California, United States. Thora Birch stands at a height of 5′ 4″ She has a weight of 57.6 kg. Her film received mediocre reviews and moderate attention from audiences upon its theatrical release but developed a following on television and on home video in subsequent years.
Thora Birch Mother | Thora Birch Mom
Thora Birch was born in Los Angeles, California to Carol Connors (mother) and Jack Birch (father). Her father is German-Jewish, Scandinavian, French-Canadian and Italian ancestry. In 1995, she was cast as the younger version of Melanie Griffith’s character in the coming-of-age film Now and Then, also starring Gaby Hoffmann, Christina Ricci, Demi Moore, and Rosie O’Donnell. It was released to largely mediocre reviews but proved to be a profit.
Thora Birch Married
Thora Birch married Michael Benton Adler in 1988 till present.
Thora Birch Actress
Thora Birch started acting in 1980. She has appeared in the films like All I Want for Christmas (1991), Patriot Games (1992), Hocus Pocus (1993), Monkey Trouble (1994), Now and Then (1995) and Alaska (1996) and Purple People Eater (1988), she has also appeared in the commercials of 1980 for Burger King, California Raisins, Quaker Oats and Vlasic Pickles.
Thora Birch made her debut films 1988. science-fiction comedy Purple People Eater, for which she won a Youth In Film Award and a Young Artist Award in the category of “Best Young Actress Under Nine Years of Age”. Also in 1988, she guest-starred in an episode of Doogie Howser, M.D., and was cast as Molly in the NBC television series Day By Day, being credited as “Thora”.
The show aired for two seasons on NBC and earned her two Young Artist Award nominations. In 1990, she made one of her roles to be the best in the sitcom Parenthood, based on the 1989 film of the same name. It aired on NBC and was canceled after one season.
In the next year, she starred in the drama Paradise, with Don Johnson, Melanie Griffith, and Elijah Wood. She won her role over more than 4,000 other young hopefuls who auditioned for it. Roger Ebert played her part with “strong, simple charm” and later earned another Young Artist Award nomination.
For the rest of the 1990s, Birch continued to find steady recognition as a child and teen actress through leading parts in numerous comedy and family feature films. In 1991, she starred with Ethan Embry in the comedy All I Want for Christmas, as a girl who plans to get her divorced parents back together for Christmas.
Her film received mediocre reviews and moderate attention from audiences upon its theatrical release but developed a following on television and on home video in subsequent years.
In 1992, she played the daughter of Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) in the spy thriller Patriot Games, which was a commercial success, grossing US$178 million at the worldwide box office.
Thora Birch appeared in the fantasy comedy of Hocus Pocus (1993) at age 10 years, opposite Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker. The film saw her play the younger sister of a teenage boy who inadvertently resurrects a villainous trio of witches.
Hocus Pocus rated average with reviewers and made a modest US$39 million in the US, but became a cult film due to strong DVD sales and large television following. In the 1994 comedy Monkey Trouble, Birch portrayed a girl who adopts a Capuchin monkey trained to pickpockets and burglarize houses.
The movie had a mixed reception, but Marjorie Baumgarten, for the Austin Chronicle, observed that her “nuanced performance (a rarity amongst child performers) no doubt lends Monkey Trouble its realistic touch”. Also in 1994, she reprised her Patriot Games role in the sequel, Clear and Present Danger, which grossed over US$215 million globally.
In 1995, she was cast as the younger version of Melanie Griffith’s character in the coming-of-age film Now and Then, also starring Gaby Hoffmann, Christina Ricci, Demi Moore, and Rosie O’Donnell. It was released to largely mediocre reviews but proved to be a profit.
Thora Birch landed a leading role in the adventure drama Alaska (1996) opposite Vincent Kartheiser, portraying two siblings who search through the Alaskan wilderness for their lost father (Dirk Benedict). For the next two years, she did not appear in a film but guest-starred in Promised Land and Touched by an Angel.
She subsequently filmed the made-for-television film Night Ride Home and an uncredited role for Anywhere but Here, both released in 1999. In 1999, she appeared in the Sam Mendes-directed drama American Beauty, as Jane Burnham, the insecure daughter of Kevin Spacey’s character.
Rolling Stone felt Birch “[glimmered] with grown-up radiance” in her role, for which she later received a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. The film was the recipient of the Academy Award for Best Picture and grossed over US$356 million worldwide, emerging as the biggest commercial success of Birch’s career to date.
In 2000 her success appeared in American Beauty, and in her two films which was released the same year. She was headlined in the 2001 black comedy Ghost World, which is directed by Terry Zwigoff and co-starring Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi and Brad Renfro.
The film, focused on the lives of two teenage outsiders (Birch and Johansson) in an unnamed American city, was released in a specialty theatrical run, to a highly favorable critical reception. James Berardinelli found Birch’s part to be her “first effectively developed role” since American Beauty and positively singled out the actress for the “quirkiness [and the] underlying sense of melancholy and ennui” in her portrayal.
Thora Birch earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Musical or Comedy. She has also appeared as the title character of the biographical television film Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story (2003), playing a young woman who, after becoming homeless at 15 amid personal tragedies, begins her work to finish her studies.
Thora Birch garnered acclaim for her part, receiving an Emmy nomination. After her professional achievements in 1990, she was profiled in 2000, to decrease her significant in the next decade, as she had more infrequent acting appearances in much smaller-scale productions.
Reflecting on her career trajectory the subsequent years during a January 2014 interview, she attributed it to not “taking” the demands the film industry had for her, opting to “maintain a strong identity and pursue things that were a little more thoughtful, and I guess nobody really wanted women to do that at that time”
She has also appeared in music and videos which including Moby’s We Are All Made of Stars, and Limp Bizkit’s Eat You Alive, which also featured Bill Paxton. She has played a supporting role in Silver City, a political satire written and directed by John Sayles, which premiered at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
In 2006, Birch had the lead role in the horror-thriller Dark Corners, portraying a troubled young woman who wakes up one day as a different person—someone who is stalked by creatures. The film did not receive a theatrical release, and instead, went straight to DVD.
It rated poorly with reviewers, but Birch was considered “convincing as the two halves of this split personality”. She followed with the female lead role in the 2008 slasher Train, which revolved around a group of US college athletes who get stalked and killed in an Eastern Europe train.
The film received a DVD release, to a mediocre overall reception, with critics comparing it unfavorably to Hostel and Turistas. She appeared in the 2009 psychological thriller Deadline, co-starring Brittany Murphy. Like Birch’s previous few projects, the film premiered directly-to-video in the UK and the US and went little seen by audiences.
Also in 2009, she starred in the independent mystery film Winter of Frozen Dreams, as Barbara Hoffman, a Wisconsin biochemistry student, and prostitute convicted of murder in the first televised murder trial ever. The film had a limited theatrical release, receiving average reviews.
DVD Talk felt she was “the weakest link in the whole piece”, while Bloody Disgusting found Birch to be “the gem” of the film, asserting that she was “very alluring to the eyes as the main subject of this case”. During filming, a controversy arose involving Birch’s father and his forced presence during Birch’s taping of a sex scene.
In 2010, she took her role in the part of Sidney Bloom and made for television movie The Pregnancy Pact, which is based on the allegedly true story of a 2008 media circus surrounding teenagers in Gloucester, Massachusetts, who allegedly agreed to concurrently give birth and raise their children communally.
The Lifetime film was favorably received by critics and was watched by 5.9 million viewers. In 2010, she was cast and scheduled to make her American stage debut in the off-Broadway revival of Dracula but was fired for the behavior of her father, her manager at the time, who physically threatened one of the show’s cast members.
She starred in the 2012 independent dramedy Petunia, playing the role of Vivian Petunia. She is credited as a co-producer in the film, which depicts simultaneously the lives and romantic relationships of the Petunia family. Birch considered the film an “intimate” and “a very modern tale”, describing it as “a little bit different from your standard summer fare”.
Distributed for a very limited release in the US, the film premiered at Cinema Village in New York City, garnering mixed reviews. After devoting herself in the academic pursuits, she returned to her acting career in 2015 with a recurring role as a software engineer Morgan in the Carlton Cuse series Colony.
Following the series, Birch first starred in the independent film The Etruscan Smile with Brian Cox, which was shot in San Francisco and Scotland. She then went to Kentucky to shoot the thriller Above Suspicion, based on the book of the same name by New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey, and co-starring Jack Huston, Emilia Clarke, and Johnny Knoxville.
Birch starred in the political thriller Affairs of State, with Adrian Grenier. The film was shot in Norfolk, Virginia. starred in the romantic comedy, The Competition, directed by Harvey Lowry, which was shot in Portland. Birch both starred in and produced the film, which was picked up for distribution by VMI Worldwide. She has also appeared in the Plan B and A24 film The Last Black Man in San Francisco, opposite Danny Glover.
Thora Birch Net Worth
Thora Birch is an American actress and producer who has an estimated net worth of $ 4 million dollars as of 2019. She has also appeared in music and videos which including Moby’s We Are All Made of Stars, and Limp Bizkit’s Eat You Alive, which also featured Bill Paxton. She has played a supporting role in Silver City, a political satire written and directed by John Sayles, which premiered at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
Thora Birch Walking Dead
The Walking Dead on Sunday introduced Hocus Pocus star and Season 10 newcomer Thora Birch, who plays newly revealed Whisperer Gamma. Episode 10×02, “We Are the End of the World,” reveals Gamma alongside sister Frances (Juliet Brett), the same Whisperer seen abandoning a baby to walkers outside the Hilltop in Season 9.
As one of the most loyal acolytes of leader Alpha (Samantha Morton), Gamma sacrificed her wavering sister to a pack of the undead to save Alpha — a move that won the otherwise nameless Whisperer the distinction of “Gamma,” making her just the third Whisperer to carry a title after Alpha and Beta (Ryan Hurst).
“It was a huge challenge, but also a massive reward because you’re coming onto a show that’s an incredibly well-oiled machine,” Birch said on Talking Dead. “Everybody knows their place and everyone’s got the vibe down, but also there’s a huge sense of mystery for someone like me coming onto it. ‘
They’re just like, ‘Basically, yeah, go over there and Whisperer walks your way around this corner.’ And you’re just expected to kind of immediately fit in. I’m like, ‘Wait, someone please tell me what to do, how to do it.’ And actually Ryan was one of my besties immediately, because I’m like, ‘How do I Whisperer walk?’ He’s like, ‘Oh, you just go out there, you do whatever.’
I’m like that’s a great philosophy, I’ll go with that [laughs].” The high-ranking Whisperer first made an impression when it was realized she’s wearing clothes taken off the corpse of the slain Enid (Katelyn Nacon), one of ten victims murdered by Alpha in revenge against the survivors warned not to trespass into Whisperer territory.
Gamma’s ceremonial induction was “a huge part of one of my first days,” Birch added. “Another part of my first day was actually the day where I eliminate my sister. So I had talked with Angela for a period of time about my overall arc and where it was going, but I hadn’t realized I would be doing the main deed in the first episode.
Unfortunately, I became too attached to the actress that was playing my sister. We had gone out a couple of times and I was like, ‘I’m sorry, I gotta kill you!’” Birch notes the decision that ended with Frances tore apart by the Whisperers’ “guardians” was an instinctual one for Gamma.
While the Whisperers on The Walking Dead aren’t ones to show their real faces, one familiar face is being added to the villainous group for Season 10. Thora Birch plays Gamma on The Walking Dead and this new character will be introduced during Oct. 13’s “We Are the End of the World.”
Like the actor who plays the Whisperers’ leader Alpha, Samantha Morton, Birch has had huge success in film before coming to the AMC series. So for fans of her previous movies (in particular, one Halloween classic), Birch’s appearance is going to possibly make viewers want to see more of the Whisperers.
The first three letters of the Greek alphabet are alpha, beta, and gamma. So while The Walking Dead hasn’t shown Gamma before, fans can deduce she is important to the Whisperers’ leadership hierarchy. “We’re going to explore a story of somebody who’s just part of that group who rises into leadership,” showrunner Angela Kang told Entertainment Weekly about Gamma.
“I think Thora brings such humanity and also badassery to the role. I’m just enamored with her work and hopefully, other people are too.” Even though the Whisperers are the villains, something that might make fans more enamored with this member is Birch’s past body of work.
Birch was a famous child star with her first role being in 1988’s Purple People Eater. But her perhaps best-known work as a child was in the fittingly-spooky Hocus Pocus. Sure, this Disney Halloween film isn’t as gruesome as The Walking Dead.
But Birch’s Dani held her own against three evil witches who wanted to steal her soul. Even more impressively, the young actor held her own against the powerhouse performances of Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker.
Another beloved movie of Birch’s that she did while she was young is Now and Then. She portrayed the younger version of Melanie Griffith’s Teeny, who grows up to be a Hollywood star. But by that point, Birch was already a star in real life and as an older teenager, she went on to appear in the Oscar Best Picture winner American Beauty and the cult film Ghost World.
Since the late ’90s and early 2000s, Birch has continued to work in film. But as The Guardian highlighted, there was a gap in her acting work in the 2010s that Birch credited to her not conforming to what Hollywood expected of a young female actor.
“I tried to walk a fine line between being alluring and somewhat glamorous but maintain a strong identity and pursue things that were a little more thoughtful, and I guess nobody really wanted women to do that at that time,” Birch told The Guardian.
In 2016, she briefly the sci-fi TV show Colony and returned to film. As for her personal life, she got married on Dec. 21, 2018. She made the announcement on Twitter where you can follow her for Walking Dead updates and some political commentary.
And if seeing her back on your screen on The Walking Dead this Halloween season isn’t enough, you know you can always flip the channel to Freeform to see Birch take on the supernatural x2 in Hocus Pocus. The Walking Dead Season 10 has already introduced several new characters, one of which is the mysterious newcomer Gamma (Thora Birch).
She’s the third in command in the Whisperers and is said to be “a sentry fiercely protective of Alpha,” but given how little we’ve seen of her on-screen so far, it would be helpful if we could find out more about her by referencing who Gamma is in The Walking Dead comics. Unfortunately, that’s not possible since she was created specifically for the show.
Thora Birch Movies
- American Beauty 1993
- Hocus Pocus 1993
- Now and Then 1995
- Ghost World 2001
- The Competition 2018
- The Hole 2001
- Patriot Games 1992
- Monkey Trouble 1994
- The Last Black Man in San Francisco 2019
- The Pregnancy Pact 2010
- Clear and Present Danger 1994
- Homeless to Harvard 2003
- All I Want for Christmas 1991
- Dungeons and Dragons 2000
- Train 2008
- Purple People Eater 1988
- The Etruscan Smile 2018
- Above Suspicion 2017
- The Story of Bonnie and Clyde 2010
- Silver City 2004
- escape from cluster prime 2005
- Night Ride Home Film
- Itsy Bitsy Spider 1992
- Dark Avenger 1990
- The Dot … and More Stories to Make You Feel Good 2004
- Shadow Realm Film 2004
Thora Birch TV Shows
- Colony 2016
- The Pregnancy Pact 2010
- My Life as a Teenage Robot 2005
- Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story 2003
- Night Visions 2002
- Night Ride Home 1999
- Promised Land 1997
- Touched by an Angel 1997
- The Outer Limits 1995
- Monty 1994
- Amen 1991
- Parenthood 1990-1991
- Dark Avenger 1990
- Married People 1990
- Doogie Howser, M.D. 1989
- Day by Day 1988-1989
Thora Birch Awards | Nomination
- Boston Film Festival 2018
- Nellie Tayloe Ross Award
- Young Hollywood Award 2003
- DVD Premiere Award 2003
- Primetime Emmy Award 2003
- Golden Globe Awards 2002
- VFCC Award 2002
- Young Hollywood Award 2002
- Cinescape Genre Face of the Future Award 2002
- OFCS Award 2002
- CFCA Award 2002
- MTV Movie Awards 2002
- Golden Satellite Award 2002
- Young Artist Award 2001
- Golden Space Needle Award 2001
- TFCA Award 2001
- Deauville Film Festival 2001
- Young Artist Award 1989
- SDFCS Award 1999
