In 2001\u2019s Ghost World she was Enid, an insecure outsider<\/a> who nonetheless projected outrageous amounts of self-confidence; who was rude, and bitchy, and just so deliciously above it all. I was Enid, too. Or at least, I wanted to be. Twenty-five years later, I tell Birch this over Zoom. Surely everyone who watches Ghost World feels the same? \u201cI would hope,\u201d Birch says, quickly. \u201cAnd I\u2019d halfway assume it\u2019s still pretty emotionally relevant for a certain age group…\u201d She nods. \u201cMaybe even more so with, you know, isolation due to social media. All that.\u201d She stares. \u201cBlah-blah-blah.\u201d She giggles.<\/p>\n Birch is now 43, but there\u2019s more than a little of the 18-year-old Enid to her, in the roll of her eyes, her dramatic sighs, and the push-and-pull dynamic she has with her own filter. She has a tendency to race up to an unvarnished truth about something, then skitter back if I try to gently prod at it. She admits to being even trickier when she was a teenager. \u201cIt was hard to leave Enid behind for a while,\u201d she says, speaking from her home in Los Angeles. \u201cI found the results of that to be personally…\u201d She pauses. \u201cNot destructive, but impeding to my own development.\u201d<\/p>\n Then again, who wouldn\u2019t be a little arrogant in her shoes? Birch was one of the most in-demand child actors of her generation, lending cute and plucky preteen insolence to classics like the Halloween favourite Hocus Pocus and the coming-of-age tale Now and Then, as well as not-so-classics like Monkey Trouble. (The poster, featuring a wide-eyed 11-year-old Birch standing next to a simian in a baseball cap, sort of says everything.) She was, she laughs, \u201ca young and borderline egotistical actor who was overly confident about her own abilities\u201d.<\/p>\n I\u2019m talking to Birch because she\u2019s appearing this week in her most high-profile role in years. In Kristen Stewart<\/a>\u2019s directorial debut The Chronology of Water, Birch floats in and out of view as the older sister of Imogen Poots<\/a>\u2019s Lidia, a woman traumatised by a life of sexual abuse and addiction. The movie itself is a bit like an impressionistic Tumblr page of waves and poetry and feeling<\/a>, as if Stewart\u2019s splayed out all of her insides on 35mm film. She\u2019s spoken, somewhat admirably, about the fact that people will either love it or hate it. But you\u2019ll absolutely be taken by Birch, who, despite minimal dialogue, conveys an incredible emotional weight whenever she\u2019s on screen, all with a crumpled gaze, or a flicker of pained recognition towards her sibling. You\u2019ll leave wanting to see her back in everything again.<\/p>\n I was in an awkward phase, and to basically get ahead, you had to be one of the girls from \u2018American Pie\u2019<\/p>\n There\u2019s also an interesting frisson to Stewart\u2019s decision to cast Birch, as if it\u2019s a gesture of thanks to one of her acting forebears. Stewart, famously, clawed her way out of very populist fame into a prickly cycle of European indies and arthouse experimentation \u2013 she\u2019s more or less had the kind of career Birch once strived for, though struggled to achieve within the confines of her era. \u201cKristen\u2019s a bit of an anomaly,\u201d Birch says. \u201cHer trajectory was similar to mine, if on a much larger scale. I imagine she\u2019s been through a lot, just based on the way the media has treated her. But she\u2019s always stayed true to herself.\u201d<\/p>\n Birch speaks opaquely about her early career \u2013 she is proud of the films she made, but also open about being slightly bruised by the mishegoss that surrounded them. She says she experienced \u201ca lot of growing pains\u201d. She\u2019d spend months on end filming movies like Paradise with Melanie Griffith, or two of Harrison Ford\u2019s Jack Ryan thrillers, then go back to school, and then go back on the road again. There was loneliness, insecurity, anger \u2013 basically all the things you\u2019re meant to feel as a teenager, only maximised because you\u2019re also famous. \u201cYou can\u2019t develop friendships, or a core group of friends that stay with you,\u201d she says. \u201cSo they were these amazing experiences, and opportunities to work with people that I had photos of on my bedroom walls, but…\u201d She trails off. \u201cWould I trade it? No. But it has a heavy price.\u201d<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Birch with Imogen Poots in Kristen Stewart\u2019s \u2018The Chronology of Water\u2019 (BFI)<\/p>\n She was a quiet child, she recalls, with her parents at first worrying that she was too quiet. They\u2019d named her after the Norse god Thor (her brother, believe it or not, is named Bolt), and it took a while for it to fit her. \u201cThere\u2019s a theory that a child hearing their name repeated over and over means that their personality starts to take on the traits of that name,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd in my own mind, this ability I have to withstand \u2013 to put it mildly \u2013 very stressful situations does take a fortitude that requires the strength of thunder and lightning at times.\u201d She laughs, nervously. \u201cSo maybe there\u2019s a little bit of that in there.\u201d<\/p>\n The young Birch could take direction well, so she found work quickly and easily. Her father acted as her manager, and was fiercely protective of her safety on sets. \u201cI wasn\u2019t sexualised at all,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it was popular, and widely accepted at the time, to portray yourself, or portray your children, in those ways, and that was never our gig.\u201d This wasn\u2019t an issue when she was in kids\u2019 movies, but by the late Nineties she noticed that work opportunities had begun to dry up. \u201cI was in an awkward phase, and to basically get ahead, you had to be one of the girls from American Pie, you know? This was the era of teen comedies and, like, \u2018You\u2019re on spring break in this movie, and then you\u2019re gonna go on a road trip in this movie, and then go on spring break again in this movie.\u2019\u201d She cringes. \u201cAnd I was like… \u2018Um, I\u2019m actually still a virgin, so…\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Then, back to back, came American Beauty and Ghost World. Birch fell in love with them on the page, and saw in Enid and American Beauty\u2019s misfit daughter Jane the kind of angsty, smart authenticity she craved. Her agents didn\u2019t want her to do Ghost World, though, while they were insistent she audition for the role of Angela in American Beauty, the rose-petal-covered object of fixation of Kevin Spacey\u2019s suburban dad. \u201cThey really thought I made the wrong choice on that one, but then were thrilled with the results,\u201d she says, rolling her eyes. \u201cYou don\u2019t even want to know their thoughts on Ghost World, but again, everyone was really happy once it came out. It was successful in the DVD market especially, and I remember being like… \u2018Oh, so it did make money? Thanks for pretending it didn\u2019t!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Birch as the teenage misanthrope Enid in \u2018Ghost World\u2019 (Shutterstock)<\/p>\n I suggest it must have been difficult to be an artistically savvy teenager surrounded by adults who didn\u2019t seem to be on the same page as you. \u201cYeah, well I was really up my own butt at the time,\u201d she cackles. What did she want from her career back then? \u201cTo become Frances McDormand,\u201d she replies, instantly. \u201cI was like, \u2018Make me that now!\u2019 But then people were like, \u2018Um… have you seen your Interview cover?\u2019\u201d I Google it later \u2013 there is Birch, aged 20, in a leopard-print Tom Ford swimsuit slashed down to her navel. \u201cGrrrrrr! Thora Birch\u201d goes the strapline.<\/p>\n That was 2002, a year after the release of Ghost World, and one of her last years of major visibility. The jobs got smaller after that, or at least less-seen, and the industry buzz she had seemed to dissipate. She wanted a particular kind of career, her agents wanted another, and she started to earn a reputation. \u201cYou come off as somebody with a major attitude problem,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd guess what? That\u2019s because you have a major attitude problem! But then you realise that the anger and frustration isn\u2019t really going to help you.\u201d So she peaced out, enrolled in university, got a degree in pre-law, and began writing and producing. \u201cIt was a time where I was like… \u2018Wait a minute, how does the world actually work?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n We talk a little about Birch\u2019s peers who didn\u2019t make it \u2013 Ghost World\u2019s Brad Renfro, who died of a heroin overdose at the age of 25; Brittany Murphy, her co-star in a 2009 thriller called Deadline, whose final years were marked by an abundance of prescription pills and personal difficulty. When Birch looks back at the fate of some of her peers, does she feel as if she survived something? She thinks for a moment.<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Birch as prickly outcast Jane in \u2018American Beauty\u2019 (Shutterstock)<\/p>\n \u201cWell, on a physical level I did,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can see the toll it takes to go through that transition from child star to working adult. It\u2019s tough, and everybody reacts to it differently.\u201d She wraps her hair in a headband. \u201cWhat helped me was maintaining a sense of humour. That was key, and also dabbling in other mediums, taking a break, getting my education, living a life outside of any sort of bubble that has a camera pointed at it. And I think getting knocked down a few times helped, as it always does. You need a few sunburns before you toughen your skin up.\u201d<\/p>\n She says she\u2019s not averse to the nostalgia many have for her early work, and that she\u2019s still fond of American Beauty, despite its reputation souring a little in recent years \u2013 partly because of its skeezy plot, and partly because of Spacey\u2019s shifting image in the public eye. \u201cI think filmmakers and true cinephiles like it just as much as they did,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then there are people who probably haven\u2019t even seen it, or just have some idea about it because of something that has nothing to do with anybody else on that set.\u201d<\/p>\n More than anything, though, she says she\u2019s doing well. She\u2019s been married since 2018, to a manager and producer named Michael Benton Adler; she\u2019s working again (she appeared in The Walking Dead and the indie hit The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and is keen to do more comedies); and she\u2019s now earning career-best reviews. Writing about The Chronology of Water last year, Variety\u2019s Clayton Davis described Birch\u2019s performance as \u201ca turn that hopefully will result in a triumphant new act … serving not just as a comeback, but as a new beginning\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m in a good place in my life,\u201d Birch says, proudly. \u201cI\u2019m happy. I\u2019ll put it that way. And that\u2019s a great accomplishment, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018The Chronology of Water\u2019 is in cinemas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-272087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Birch](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/THE-CHRONOLOGY-OF-WATER-5_A-BFI-Distribution-release.jpeg\")
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<\/p>\n![\"Birch](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/shutterstock_editorial_14202100bq.jpeg\")
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