Thora Birch is an American actress and producer. She made her feature film debut in 1988 with a starring role in Purple People Eater, for which she received a Young Artist Award for “Best Young Actress Under Nine Years of Age”.
Her breakthrough into adult-oriented roles came at the end of that decade when she earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Jane Burnham in American Beauty (1999). Birch took a break from acting between 2012 and 2016 but has since had parts in several independent features, such as The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019).
From 2019 to 2020, she played the role of Gamma / Mary on the tenth season of AMC’s The Walking Dead. Deadline reported on May 5, 2022, that Birch would make her directorial debut and co-star in an upcoming Lifetime feature film about Gabby Petito. Birch previously worked with Lifetime on two films in which she starred.
Why did Thora Birch get exiled?
According to ABC, Thora Birch was fired from a 2010 off-Broadway production of Dracula due to her father and then manager’s alleged attitude and behaviour.
Director Paul Alexander told ABC that he asked another actor to rub Birch’s back for a scene; her father then “[tried] to convey Thora’s discomfort” in a manner Alexander interpreted as a threat.
Deciding Birch wasn’t worth her overbearing, overprotective dad menacing the rest of his cast, Alexander somewhat reluctantly gave both Birches the boot from his production.
It could be that the ramifications of Jack Birch’s behaviour on the Dracula set have been wildly blasted out of proportion. Asked about the hullabaloo surrounding the incident in 2016, Birch told The Guardian, “A lot of it was [email protected]#$.” Maybe she’s onto something.
This isn’t the only production Birch parted from. She was originally cast as Tammy Metzler in Election (1999), a critically acclaimed black comedy starring Reese Witherspoon as a ruthlessly ambitious high school electioneer, but she quit (or was fired, according to some sources) after just a few days on set.
It’s a shame that Birch had creative differences with the director, Alexander Payne; the satire would’ve been a perfect fit for her sardonic on-screen persona.