Fairuza Balk Bio

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Fairuza Alejandra Balk (born May 21, 1974) is an American film actress. She made her theatrical film debut as Dorothy Gale in Disney's Return to Oz. She has also appeared in The Craft, American History X and The Waterboy.

Fairuza Balk: Biography

Fairuza Balk - Early life

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 Pingree, Idaho and moved to Turkey at age 10, 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" Her father took her several times to the Oregon Country Fair where she would do Flamenco dancing on stage and her father played his Middle Eastern music. 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 11, they moved to London, where she attended various prestigious ballet and acting schools.

Fairuza Balk - Career

It was in London that she was selected by Walt Disney Productions to star in Return to Oz, the loose sequel to MGM's 1939 musical 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. 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 has continued to find roles. She co-starred in The Island of Dr Moreau (1996), gave a performance as a neo-Nazi opposite Edward Norton in American History X (1998), and was featured in The Waterboy (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.

Fairuza Balk - Personal life

Balk lives in Hollywood, California, and has an apartment in New York City. Outside her career, her interests include writing poetry and fiction, playing guitar and violin, 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 in American Perfekt (1997), as well as C. M. Talkington, the director and writer of the cult classic, Love and a .45.

She was a well known neopagan 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.