Hot Celebrities Interview

THORA BIRCH
BY DOMINIQUE SWAIN

DOMINIQUE SWAIN: Hi, Thora, what have you been up to?
THORA BIRCH: I just got back from filming Dungeons & Dragons in Prague.

DS: Is it going to be good?
TB: Um, it's going to look awesome. It's a very visual film. I mean, half the time I was just looking at this huge blue screen.

DS: At the dragon?
TB: No. I ride the dragon. [laughs]

DS: Oh-ho. Fun city! OK, your new film American Beauty opens this month. What's it about?
TB: It centers on Kevin Spacey, who plays my dad, and all the events that lead up to his death in the course of one year. He develops a huge crash on my best friend while he's going through his midlife crisis and I fall in love with the boy next door, who has a very scary, controlling father. When I saw it I was emotionally shattered, because it has you in stitches one minute, and then the next you're in this vortex of conflicting feelings.

DS: What's your character, Jane, like?
TB: She's confused and upset because she's like the by-product of all her parents' problems. They don't like each other and that bleeds over into her psyche, even if she doesn't realize it.

DS: Do you want to hear my favorite poem?
TB: Yeah.

DS: It goes, "They fuck you up your Mum and Dad. / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you with the faults they had, / And add some extra just for you." [Philip Larkin, 1971]
TB: You know what? The director [Sam Mendes] told me that one day when we were making American Beauty.

DS: I heard it on the set of my last movie, too, because my costar was convinced that my parents had wrecked me. I was like, "Great, thanks. Thank you for validating that." Did you go through a period of teenage rebellion?
TB: I've definitely had those moments with my parents where I was like, Please stay the fuck away from me. But it's hard to be pissed at two people who devote a tremendous amount of time and energy and effort on your behalf. I don't think there is any teenager out there who doesn't have moments when they feel like there's anything your parents could say or do to make everything OK. You have to make it all right yourself.

DS: Do you feel you gave one of your strongest performances in American Beauty?
TB: In a sense, I feel like I started all over again with this film. The other films I've done were great, and I love them all, but I'm not there any more. I've moved on. It's just different and I recognize the difference.

DS: What do you seek in a script?
TB: Things that are hard to do. Right now I want to take a dive into something seedy. [laughs]

DS: OK. Any boys you're interested in?
TB: Boys? Yeah! I'm interested in boys! [laughs] I don't have any steady relationship, though, because I don't want to. I would rather be free to look around, if you know what I mean.
DS: What would you change about the world?
TB: I think we should decompress it, knock it down, and then restructure the whole thing from the bottom up again. Recently there was something on the news about how amphibians are becoming extinct and it caught me off guard how much I was upset by it. One of my friends said, "You're nuts crying about a freaking lizard!" But at that time, it just messed me up!

DS: I found a frog in my bathtub yesterday. But then it stopped hopping because my sister's five-year-old kid was prodding it.
TB: Oh my gosh.

DS: I don't mean to upset you again. OK, I think I'm done with the questions. I've never done this before.
TB: Well, I thought it was the only way I could get you to call me.