Mia Kirshner

Mia Kirshner

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Birth name: Mia Kirshner
Date of birth: 25 January 1975
Place of birth: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Nickname: Mia
Height: 5′ 3″ (1.60 m)

Famous Quote: “I am an extremely private person. I always feel that I come across as a caricature of myself whenever I do interviews. I think one’s sexuality can be the center of life, and coming out and discovering your sexuality is something that really can define your existence. In terms of my own film experience, I’m definitely used to morose and very heavy, heavy dramas.”

Contact Address and Autograph: Addresses and fan mail information

Mia Kirshner
Brillstein-Grey Entertainment
9150 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 350
Beverly Hills, CA 90212, USA 

Biography: Mia Kirshner (born January 25, 1975) is a Canadian actress who works in movies and television series. This petite, raven-haired beauty entered features at age 17, playing a clairvoyant dominatrix in “Love and Human Remains” (1993). She followed up with eccentric Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s “Exotica” (1994) playing an exotic dancer who strips out of a Catholic school girl uniform. As Christina, Kirshner was called upon to alternately evoke innocence and a maturity beyond her years. Kirshner made her US debut in 1995 with a bit part as Kevin Bacon’s sister in “Murder in the First” and a role in the ABC movie “Johnny’s Girl.”

Kirshner was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the daughter of Etti, a teacher of English, and Sheldon Kirshner, a journalist who wrote for The Canadian Jewish News. Kirshner is a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, her father was born in a Displaced persons camp in Germany in 1946 and met Kirshner’s mother, a Bulgarian Jewish refugee, in Israel. Kirshner studied Russian literature and 20th-century movie industry at McGill University in Montreal.

In 1993, Kirshner played a dominatrix in Denys Arcand’s movie Love and Human Remains and won a Genie nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. The year after she starred in Atom Egoyan’s Exotica. In 1996, she appeared in The Crow: City of Angels.

The young actress soon found herself in demand, though. After completing a supporting role in “The Grass Harp”, she landed the female lead opposite Vincent Perez in “The Crow: City of Angels” (both 1996). Kirshner then segued to the featured role of Kitty in Bernard Rose’s remake of “Leo Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’” (1997) and later won the role of a journalist covering a hostage situation in “Mad City” (also 1997). The actress next toiled in several low-profile, non-mainstream films before making the transition to television as a cast member of the werewolf-themed CBS drama “Wolf Lake” (2001). 

Kirshner appeared in the first three episodes of 24 as bisexual terrorist Mandy in 2001. She would later reprise the role for the second season’s finale and in the latter half of the show’s fourth season. Also in 2001, Kirsher, played Catherine Wyler, The Cruelest Girl in School, in Not Another Teen Movie. The character is primarily a spoof of Kathryn Merteuil (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Cruel Intentions, and partially based on Mackenzie Siler from She’s All That. In Marilyn Manson’s music video for Tainted Love, which was featured on the movie’s soundtrack, she has a cameo appearance as her character Catherine Wyler. Despite critical praise the series was cancelled early into its first season, but Kirshner returned to the big screen in the youth-film skewering spoof “Not Another Teen Movie” (2001), playing the meanest girl in John Hughes High School. In the little seen but compelling indie “New Best Friend” (2002), Kirshner was especially effective as a nervous, people-pleasing college student who gets drawn into a damaging social circle with disastrous results; and she appeared to great effect in director Bob Clark’s spiritual-minded romance “Now & Forever” (2003).

In 2006, she starred in Brian De Palma’s movie The Black Dahlia, alongside Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank. Kirshner plays a young actress, Elizabeth Short, who was horrifically murdered in 1947. Kirshner has portrayed Jenny Schecter on the hit Showtime series, The L Word since the show began in 2004. Meanwhile, Kirshner returned to the big screen, costarring in “The Black Dahlia” (2006), Brian De Palma’s take on James Ellroy’s complicated and richly-textured noir thriller about two hard-edged cops (Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart) who descend into obsession, corruption and sexual degeneracy as they investigate the brutal murder of would-be actress Elizabeth Short (Kirshner), who was found tortured and vivisected in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. 

Kirshner has finished working on the book I Live Here, which she co-produced with ex-Adbusters staffers Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons, as well as writer James MacKinnon. In the book, women and children refugees from places such as Chechnya, Juárez (Mexico) and Malawi, Africa will tell their life stories. The book features original material from well-known comic and graphic artists, including Joe Sacco and Phoebe Gloeckner. It will be published in the U.S by Random House/Pantheon in 2008. It was supported logistically by Amnesty International, which will receive proceeds from the book.

Kirshner was ranked #43 on the Maxim Hot 100 Women of 2002. She and Beverly Polcyn were nominated for Best Kiss at the 2002 MTV Movie Awards for Not Another Teen Movie.

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