People develop. Two highly publicized incidents involving Birch's father and then-manager, Jack Birch, only compounded her struggling public persona.
First, Page Six alleged that while Thora filmed indie film The Winter of Frozen Dreams , Jack threatened the crew and "demanded" to be present for her sex scenes on an otherwise closed set.
Jack, who co-starred with Thora's mom Carol Connors in Deep Throat , reportedly gave orders, even going so far as to tell the director "where to place his camera so that Thora would look her best.
But while her parents had been legally required to sign off on and be present for Thora's underage topless scene in American Beauty , by now she was 25 and very much an adult. As one source told the outlet, "It was so wrong.
The second incident occurred just as Thora was meant to make her New York stage debut in a off-Broadway production of Dracula. Four days before the show opened, the producers fired Thora and replaced her with her understudy. The New York Times reported that, according to the play's director, "the decision had nothing to do with Ms.
Birch's acting abilities" and everything to do with the fact that her dad "threatened another actor" who was rubbing Thora's back in a scene. ABC News also reported that Jack insisted on hanging out in the girls' dressing room. But Thora was in shock. I mean, there had been no tensions, everything was going wonderfully. Then Friday they just asked me to leave the building. For what it's worth, Dracula ended up a theatrical disaster and closed early after just four shows. In the years that followed, Birch all but retreated from acting.
But the truth is there were a lot of other things combined with me stepping away," she says. I had not taken time to just live life and explore myself as an adult. After taking a small step back and gaining a slight reputation for being difficult to work with — she felt people thought she should "just shut up" and conform to their expectations — her career went through a definite quiet period but she's perhaps poised for a comeback with a role in the next season of The Walking Dead.
Thora portrays Gamma, one of the Whisperers, the current villains of the show. Gamma is not directly based on anyone from the comics, but she will be a devout believer in Alpha's leadership unlike Alpha's own daughter, Lydia. Not much more is known about her role, but the photos of her so far tell us Daryl and the rest of the group should be scared. Based on the true story of an FBI agent tried for murder, the film is slated for release sometime later this year. Whatever Happened to Josh Hartnett?
Whatever Happened to Amy Smart? She often seemed pleasingly detached from the Hollywood fluff machine, making a begrudging smile on the red carpet. Did she feel people were trying to make her into something she wasn't? I just didn't take advice and I think people got pissed off at me for not taking advice. Did she struggle with the glamour that her industry demanded of her as she transitioned from being a child star?
She pauses for a full minute. I found it distasteful. So yeah, I had that kind of 'oh, piss off, everyone' attitude. In the late 90s and the cool young female actors on screen were pretty, but in a grungy, even self-effacing way, and they looked as if they would rather eat their ankle-length skirts than have a blow dry: Juliette Lewis , Julia Stiles, Leelee Sobieski, Winona Ryder.
As Birch grew from child to adult actor, she fitted into this trend perfectly. But by the early noughties, a very different look was emerging for young female celebrities, one based more on Paris Hilton than Kurt Cobain. You only have to look at Ghost World to see what options were available to young women in Hollywood at the time: they could glam up and be A-list sex symbols, like Johansson, or they could refuse to wear the frilly bows and disappear, like Birch.
How does it feel when she looks at Johansson's career, considering she accepted all the things Birch rejected? Birch screws up her face: "I don't know. Look at her. Whatever," she says in a "like duh" tone. Another factor in Birch's disillusion with Hollywood was that she was a witness to its casualties, having worked with Brittany Murphy and Brad Renfro. But when I worked with her I saw the condition" — she twirls her finger next to her head — "and I thought, that can't be good. As for poor Renfro, who died at 25 from a heroin overdose in , Birch says she was "shattered by the state of him" when they made Ghost World: "I wish I'd said something, like: isn't there something that should be done, other than a guardian who is not a guardian …" In neither case, she says, was she surprised when she heard about Murphy and Renfro's deaths "and that was another problem for me".
Now, roughly two decades after her teen years, Birch is, for lack of a better word, back. According to director Joe Talbot, it all comes back to the very film that cemented Birch, in his mind, as a misfit icon. In our film, we meet her character on a bus in the heart of San Francisco—almost as if she kept riding it all these years, and somehow wound up in the Bay Area working a tech job she loathed. Her exchange that follows with Jimmie, however brief, has been written about and quoted more than any other part of the film.
The answer is not necessarily what a fan of the character might hope to find, but it is fitting for the witty know-it-all from an unnamed suburban sprawl, and a fun bit of trivia to chew on after watching the movie.
He tells her she does not have permission to talk about his city that way. She and her friend appear shocked and scoff, clearly turned off by this exchange, and to have been identified as not so different from the gentrifiers.
The director was a fan of Ghost World , which was a film I did that Dan Clowes created through a graphic novel. And Terry Zwigoff, who directed the film, lives in San Francisco.
It was pretty apparent right away that it was a love poem about a city, but also about friendship and it was so rich with many, many different themes. Even though my contribution to it is quite small, I just wanted to be a part of it.
I thought it was timely as well as a return to this type of independent cinema that I appreciate and love, and so often miss honestly. I think when I first met Joe, I thought, wow this kind of reeks of a budding auteur, you know? Joe told me he cast you because he was a fan of Ghost World, as so many people are.
He also mentioned that he imagined your character in The Last Black Man in San Francisco as a grown-up version of Enid Coleslaw from Ghost World , if she got on the bus and made it all the way up north and landed a tech job. I think we both got a kick out of that idea and concept!
In many parts of the film, there are little crossovers to Ghost World. The whole bus theme, waiting for a bus, old naked dudes. Have you seen a revival of that film and the early aughts style in the areas of pop culture you consume lately? For sure!
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