Fairuza
Balk (Dorothy) was born at Point
Reyes, California, on May 21st 1974.
Her Father , Solomon, is a talented
folk musician who spent some of his
early years in Turkey. Her
mother, Cathryn, is a performer and
teacher of oriental dance. The
Balk family are Minnesota farming
people who came originally from
Northern Holland.
Fairuza's name stems from her
parental background: Balk is a Dutch
name, and Fairuza is a
Turkish-Arabic name meaning
"turquoise". In Persian,
Fairuza means "special one."
The
Balks moved to Vancouver, British
Columbia, with a successful dance
group. Fairuza enrolled at the
Lord Byng French Immersian School
where she has become fluent in
French to conform with Canada's
policy if becoming a bilingual
nation.
While
furthering her own career as an
entertainer, Cathryn Balk realized
her daughter's acting potential and
began submitting Fairuza for
television roles. And in 1984
Fairuza appeared with Loretta Swit
on the ABC-TV special "The Best
Christmas Pageant Ever".
While
Fairuza was being trained in acting
technique at the Ramona Beauchamp
Agency, the word went out that Walt
Disney Pictures was seeking a
youngster to play Dorothy in a major
motion picture based on the classic
literature of L. Frank Baum.
Fairuza
was chosen from hundreds of
applicants for the starring role in
"Return to Oz" : the search began
August 1983 with and open call for
girls in the nine-to-twelve age
bracket. Auditions were held
in six major American cities and two
Canadian cities in November, twelve
finalists were flown to London in
January for complete studio screen
tests. And the role went
hands-down to Fairuza, the youngest
of the applicants.
Fairuza next took her first role as
a witch in The Worst Witch, a
1986 HBO movie based on the popular
children's book. She went on to play
the role of a young Barbara Hutton
in the made-for-TV movie, Poor
Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton
Story, in 1987.
Fairuza attracted attention as a virgin promised in
marriage to someone 30 years her
senior, in Milos Forman's Valmont
(1989). Fairuza went on to land the
role of a young rape victim in the
Lifetime Cable-TV film Shame
(1992), and her outstanding
performance earned her a CableACE
Award nomination for Best Actress.
But the first role to really thrust
Fairuza Balk into the spotlight was
her portrayal of Ione Skye's
sensitive younger sister in Allison
Anders' independent hit, Gas Food
Lodging (1992), for which she
received the prestigious Independent
Spirit Award for Best Female Lead.
In 1993, she co-starred opposite Tim Roth as a
murderous teenage runaway in the
made-for-TV movie Murder in the
Heartland (based on the true
story of Caril Ann Fugate and
Charles Starkweather), and the
following year she was seen as an
elder daughter forced to become the
head of the household when her
father's schemes turn sour, in
1994's Imaginary Crimes,
opposite Harvey Keitel. She
realistically and sympathetically
played a self-destructive young
prostitute in Things to Do in
Denver When You're Dead (1995).
Fairuza continued landing steady roles in feature
films, most notably as a troubled
high school student involved in
witchcraft in the film that elevated
her to cult status, The Craft
(1996). With a cast of (then)
emerging teen stars including Skeet
Ulrich, Neve Campbell and Robin
Tunney, the supernatural thriller
became a hit and a favorite among
teenage girls. But this was more
than just a role for Fairuza, who
was by then a practicing occultist
-- she once owned an occult shop in
Hollywood called Panpipes Magickal
(she has since sold it).
In 1996, Fairuza appeared in The
Island of Dr. Moreau, in which
she showed off her belly dancing
talent and attracted the attention
of her British co-star David
Thewlis, whom she was rumored to
have dated. The pair went on to star
in the 1997 movie, American
Perfekt (1997).
Fairuza Balk co-starred with Edward
Norton and Edward Furlong in
American History X (1998), a
film about a violent white
supremacist who changes his ways.
Continuing her box-office presence, Fairuza also played
Adam Sandler's love interest in the
hit comedy, The Waterboy
(1998). That same year, she appeared
in the independent feature
There's No Fish Food In Heaven,
opposite Debi Mazar.
In 2000, she played a "Band-Aid" groupie in Cameron
Crowe's critically-acclaimed
Almost Famous, about a high
school boy who ends up touring with
a '70s rock band. In 2002, Fairuza
appeared along with Drea de Matteo
and Stephen Dorff in the box-office
disappointment Deuces Wild, a
1950s street gang movie. That same
year she gave a touching performance
in the indie film, Personal
Velocity: Three Portraits.
Balk recently provided her voice for the video games
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
(2002) and Lords of Everquest
(2003). She was also the voice of
the "Snail" in Crispin Glover's,
What Is It?. You can catch
Fairuza Balk in 2005's A Year and
a Day.
