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MISCHA BARTON BIOGRAPHY |
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Hailed as one of the most talented child actors
of the 1990s, Mischa Barton had carved out the beginnings of an
enviable career on the screen and stage by the time most kids
her age were being allowed to see PG-13 movies on their own.
Possessing blonde hair, blue eyes the color and approximate size
of Wedgewood saucers, and precocious intelligence, Barton first
came to the attention of critics and audiences as the ten-year-old
heroine of John Duigan's Lawn Dogs (1997), a drama that cast her
as an alienated girl whose friendship with an earthy lawn boy (Sam
Rockwell) creates controversy in her exclusive neighborhood.
Born January 24, 1986, in London, England, Barton was raised in
the city until the age of four, when her father took a job on
Wall Street that relocated the family to New York. Following the
move, she began working as a child model and taking summer camp
acting classes; after being spotted by a talent agent, the
aspiring actress got her first professional break on the New
York stage in 1994, when she played Vodya Domik, one of the lead
characters in an off-Broadway production of Tony Kushner's Slavs!
Earning rave reviews for her performance, Barton went on to
perform in a number of plays, including the Lincoln Center
production of James Lapine's Twelve Dreams and Naomi Wallace's
One Flea Spare at the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public
Theatre, which cast her in the lead role of a street urchin
opposite Dianne Wiest. While she was building a career on the
stage and as a model for the likes of Calvin Klein, Barton was
also beginning to accumulate a number of screen credits. After
doing a year-long stint on the popular soap opera All My
Children, she had her first publicized screen role in the little-seen
New York Crossing (1996), in which she starred as an Upper East
Side schoolgirl opposite Tina Majorino and Karen Black. The film
was released in 1997, the same year that Lawn Dogs came out to
fairly strong reviews that resulted in the first shades of
publicity for Barton. A starring role as a 13-year-old who holds
up a bank alongside her boyfriend followed in 1999, in the
independent drama Pups; unfortunately, the film was released
only two days before the tragic killing spree at Columbine High
School, and unsurprisingly, failed to earn much in the way of
distribution. That same year, Barton appeared in supporting
roles in both Notting Hill and M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth
Sense, the latter of which cast her as the ghost of a sickly
girl.
Barton's increasing recognition was subsequently reflected by
her involvement in a number of screen projects. Included amongst
them was Skipped Parts (2000), a coming-of-age comedy which cast
her as a sexually precocious 14-year-old who is in a hurry to
lose her virginity. The film also starred Jennifer Jason Leigh,
Brad Renfro, and Drew Barrymore. ~ Rebecca Flint, All Movie
Guide
Barton has subsequently completed work on an additional five
features. They include this past summer's Lost and Delirious
(2001) opposite Piper Perabo for Lions Gate and Julie Johnson
(2001) with Courtney Love and Lili Taylor; both of which
premiered at Sundance. She can also be seen in Skipped Parts
(2000) with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Drew Barrymore.
At age nine, Barton began her promising career in New York
Theater with a lead role in Tony Kushner's "Slavs!" She soon
segued into the lead role of Emma Hatrick in James Lapine's 'Twelve
Dreams' at the renowned Lincoln Center. Among her varied stage
credits are 'Where the Truth Lies' and 'One Flea Spare', both of
which took place at the New York Shakespeare Festival.
No stranger to television, Barton had a short-term role playing
the character of Corvina Lang in flashbacks on "All My Children"
(1970) in 1994. She also portrayed the title role of Frankie
alongside Joan Plowright in the recent Showtime feature Frankie
& Hazel (2000) (TV) for producer Barbra Streisand's Barwood
Films. Barton recently returned from location in Australia
filming the Disney telefilm A Ring of Endless Light (2002) (TV)
and segued into an eight-episode arch on ABC's "Once and Again"
(1999). A longtime Manhattan resident, Barton enjoys family-life
with her parents and two sisters. |
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