Remember how fantastic Thora Birch was in American Beauty? And Ghost World? It really felt like she was going to be the Next Big Thing. Kinda like Wes Bentley. And Mena Suvari. Hmmm. I’m beginning to see a Beauty alum pattern. But now Birch is doing Z-grade schlock like Winter of Frozen Dreams (probably my favorite Huh? film title since Bruce Willis’ Tears of the Sun), a true-life crime drama where she plays a prostitute turned murderer. The trailer for the flick, costarring Keith Carradine(!), just recently popped up online. What do you think PopWatchers? Are you as bummed about Birch’s career path as I am?
Apr 14
2009
02:00 PM ET
Thora Birch: Latest victim of the 'American Beauty' kid-star career curse?
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I’m “bummed” about her unfortunate forehead; the entire article could’ve been written on it.
her career sucks now cause she did that awful dungeouns and dragons movie
I loved her in Fly Away Home, wasnt she also on a sitcom with Julie Louis-Dreyfuss?
Chichi, that’s too small to be a forehead. It’s a fivehead. Maybe five-and-a-half. Loved Thora in Ghost World, but just sayin’…
You’re right. She was great in “Ghost World” I thought was going to be a big star, instead it was her co-star, Scarlett Johansen that broke through with “Lost in Translation.”
I don’t think Thora Birch was in “Fly Away Home”. I believe that was Anna Paquin. I miss the young Birch days where she was in “Hocus Pocus” and “Monkey Trouble” and who can forget “Now and Then”? Those were the good old days. Thora could rebound though. She could make a comeback.
She was just a teenager when she did American Beauty. It’s often hard for them to keep the momentum going. And she’d be hardly the last ex-teen actress to spend time making small independent films after a blockbuster. Anyone follow Kate Winslet’s career path post-Titanic? The number of people who saw the films she made in the years immediately following (including her more recent successes) could probably fill a large bus. If Birch is still acting in film, then she’s being successful.
Have you even seen the movie? Know what it’s about? Probably not. I doubt any of you can read past the logos on your T-shirts. I wonder if Tim Stack has seen it, or if he is just desperate to drum up controversy for an otherwise inane web site. Some films are poorly marketed and the trailers simply do not do them justice.
Birch is not a leading lady type of actress. She is a character actress, and a very adept one. She continues to hone her craft and does not make schlock. What have you guys done with your lives up to now? It is interesting to see people with no accomplishments condemn the work of others using a misguided set of standards, or acting out of jealousy.
Just out of curiosity, where did you get your film degrees?
I think (based on looks and past work) that there might be a good sister movie to be made with her and Mary Lynn Rajskub.
From what I’ve heard the fault for Thora’s career decline may lie with mismanagement of her career by her ex-porn actor parents.
Andrew, I had that very thought. Ironic, isn’t it?
Come on! Any teenager can show her tits; that does not mean she’s taleted and that does not make her a star. What it means though, is how ignorant you are about the world that it would at all surprise you that “actresses” who start their “careers” by showin skin might end up in the Z flicks. Hang up your pen and go back to the school of hard knocks, dummy.
The forehead comments are stupid, the question was about her career.
The majority of stuff Hollywood releases is garbage anyway…maybe she should try theater.
The last thing I saw her in was a Lifetime movie, “Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story.” It was OK, but I think she’s a better actress than that. It doesn’t help that she’s not “conventionally pretty” like Lohan or Hilary Duff, who were starting to populate the silver screen around that time.
Well, let me stop typing and hang up my pen on that pen hook I keep by my desk. Then it’s off to Hard Knock School where maybe I’ll learn how to decipher Kikide’s incoherent ramblings.