Thora Birch

Thora Birch lets the melancholy remain visible in a sarcastic young woman. The disapproval is there, but it does not tell us everything about the person doing the disapproving. We rate her restraint, especially when a film gives her room to make an outsider more than a collection of sharp replies. Her child roles included Dani Dennison in Hocus Pocus (1993); American Beauty (1999) brought the move into adult drama. It was a useful setting for that seriousness.

As Jane Burnham, the alienated daughter in Sam Mendes's film, she gives adolescent unhappiness emotional weight. We were moved by Jane because Birch lets the hurt register without overplaying it. Alan Ball's screenplay too often presents familiar complaints about middle-class life as fresh discoveries, and the acting cannot make those observations more original. Annette Bening is our particular reason to recommend the performances, but Birch belongs in that recommendation too. Jane matters to the film because we can take her feelings seriously even when we have reservations about what the adults have been given to say.

In Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World (2001), her Enid Coleslaw combines sarcasm with a persistent melancholy. Birch's intelligence and restraint are well suited to a character whose disaffection could otherwise become wearing. The danger in describing her through Jane and Enid is that we start treating an actor as a type. Those parts are good reasons to follow her, not instructions for everything she should play.

The later work has taken her through independent films and back to television in The Walking Dead (2019–2020), alongside a supporting part as Becca in The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019). That less tidy stretch should not tempt us to pretend every credit deserves the same attention. Nor does a smaller part tell us that an actor has become less interesting. Start with American Beauty for Birch within a strong cast, then try Ghost World if her quiet handling of disaffection is what stays with you.