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Fairuza Alejandra Balk (born May 21, 1974) is an American film actress. She is known for her role in the 1996 movie The Craft, the 1998 movie The Waterboy and, more than ten years earlier, in Disney's 1985 Return to Oz. Blue-eyed, dark-haired Fairuza Balk weathered the storms of Oz, gradually breaking free from her fresh-faced little kid persona to plunge into dark and depressing film scenarios that ultimately reveal an optimism at her core. She worked first on TV in NBC's "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" (1983) before beating out 1,200 girls to fill Dorothy's ruby slippers in Walter Murch's feature debut, "Return to Oz" (1985). Refusing to be traumatized by critics comparing her unfavorably to Judy Garland, Balk rebounded for more kid stuff as the well-meaning klutz Mildred Hubble in "The Worst Witch", a 1986 HBO movie based on the popular children's book. Balk was born as Fairuza Alejandra Feldthouse in Point Reyes, California. Her mother, Cathryn Balk, is of Dutch descent and worked as a belly dancer and teacher of Middle Eastern and Flamenco dancing. Her father, Solomon Feldthouse, is a traveling folk musician who was born in Pingry, Idaho and moved to Turkey at the age of ten, where he lived for six years and learned Greek, Turkish and Persian music. It has been reported that when she was born, her father saw her turquoise eyes and exclaimed, "Fairuza!", meaning "turquoise." Fairuza is the Persian word "فيروزه" firouzeh. Soon after her parents divorced, Balk and her mother became world travelers. She was raised for the first part of her life in San Francisco on a commune-type ranch. They then moved to Vancouver when she was nine. When she was eleven, they moved to London, where she attended various prestigious ballet and acting schools. was in London that she was selected by Walt Disney Productions to star in Return to Oz, the loose sequel to 1939's The Wizard of Oz. It was not her first role (that was a television movie called The Best Christmas Pageant Ever made in 1983), but it was the one that brought her attention as an actress. The role led to other minor roles, and in 1988 she moved to Paris to do more work as an actress. By 1989 she was back in Vancouver, where she attended high school. However, she soon decided to take correspondence courses instead and went back to Hollywood, where she gained increasing notice as an actress. Balk attracted attention in her first somewhat adult role as the virginal Cecile de Volanges promised in marriage to someone 30 years her senior in Milos Forman's "Valmont" (1989). She turned in an outstanding performance as a young rape victim in the TV film "Shame" (Lifetime, 1992) and played the blossoming younger sister of Ione Skye in Allison Anders' indie favorite "Gas Food Lodging" (1992). In 1992 she was awarded an Independent Spirit Award as best actress for her performance in the Allison Anders film Gas Food Lodging. In 1996, she appeared in a lead role in The Craft, in which her character forms a teenage coven with characters portrayed by Neve Campbell, Rachel True and Robin Tunney. Balk portrayed the older daughter who inadvertently becomes head of the household when the latest scheme of her father (Harvey Keitel) turns sour in "Imaginary Crimes" (1994) and was extremely sympathetic as a self-destructive prostitute in the little-seen "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead" (1995). She continued to work steadily in features of varying quality, including playing a high school student caught up in the dark side of witchcraft in the hit supernatural thriller "The Craft" (1996) and co-starred with Edward Norton and Edward Furlong in Tony Kaye's "American History X" (1998), about a white supremacist who reforms. Balk has continued to find roles. She had a performance as a neo-Nazi opposite Edward Norton in American History X (1998), starred in The Island of Dr Moreau (1996), and was featured in The Water Boy (1998) opposite Adam Sandler. Since 2000 she has appeared in over half a dozen movies. She has also done voice work for animated films and video games, including Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Balk lives in Venice, California, and has an apartment in New York City. Outside her career, her interests include writing poetry and fiction, playing guitar, singing, and dancing. Over the years she has been romantically involved with a number of well known men including British actor David Thewlis who appeared with her in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) and C.M. Talkington, director and writer of the cult classic, Love and a .45. She was a well known Pagan even before shooting 1996's The Craft. She provided some witchcraft information on set and helped design many of the sets to match real Pagan rituals. From 1995 to 2001, she owned Panpipes Magickal Marketplace, billed as the nation's largest occult store, in Hollywood, California. |
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