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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 and, more than ten
years earlier, in Disney's 1985 Return to Oz.
Early life: Balk was born as Fairuza Alejandra
Feldthouse in Point Reyes, California. Her mother,
Cathryn Balk, is a belly dancer and dance teacher of
Dutch descent. Her father, Solomon Feldthouse, is a
traveling 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 is said that when she was born her
father saw her turquoise eyes and exclaimed,
"Fairuza!", meaning "turquoise."
Fairuza is the Persian word 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. At 11 they moved
to London, where she attended various prestigious ballet
and acting schools.
Career: It was in London that she was selected by
the Walt Disney Company to star in Return to Oz, the
loose sequel but not a 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 lead 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. In 1992 she was awarded an Independent Spirit
Award as best actress for her performance in the Allison
Anders film Gas Food Lodging.
A couple of years later she cast in as lead role in The
Craft, in which her character forms a teenage coven with
characters portrayed by Neve Campbell, Rachel True and
Robin Tunney. Her casting would seem particularly
appropriate as Balk studies Wicca in real life and was
part owner of a store dedicated to that religion named
Panpipes Magickal Marketplace. She has since sold her
interest in the store and is no longer affiliated with
it.
Balk has continued to find roles. She had a performance
as a neo-Nazi opposite Edward Norton in American History
X (1998) and 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.
Personal life: 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 is the lead singer in a
band.
Balk belly dances, as demonstrated in the movie The
Island of Dr. Moreau. Her nickname is Ru. Her favorite
authors include: William Burroughs, James Joyce, Isabel
Allende, Mikhail Bulgakov, Oscar Wilde, and recently
Ernest Hemingway and Balzac. She is quite adept at
playing pool and plays both the guitar and the piano.
Though an avid reader, she is in fact dyslexic. There is
an Irish band named after her. |
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