Vera Farmiga Biography
A porcelain-skinned, blue-eyed beauty, Vera Farmiga began her professional acting career in the mid-1990s counting among her credits performances in stage productions of “The Tempest”, “The Glass Menagerie” and “Hamlet”. Making her Broadway debut as an understudy in the 1996-1997 play “Taking Sides”, Farmiga followed up with a well-reviewed featured turn in the 1997 Off-Broadway production “Second-Hand Smoke”. That same year she was featured in the CBS “Hallmark Hall of Fame” TV-movie “Rose Hill”, and starred with then-unknown Heath Ledger on the Fox medieval adventure series “Roar”, playing female lead Catlin. A former slave turned dreadlocked battler, Farmiga’s Catlin was a fan favorite, though she would later admit embarrassment over the attention garnered for the role on the short-lived genre program. (The series did introduce her to her future husband, actor Sebastian Roache.)
1998 saw Farmiga make her big screen debut, acting in the drama “Return to Paradise”. In 2000 she played the daughters of Christopher Walken and Richard Gere in “The Opportunists” and “Autumn in New York” respectively, and made the most of her underwritten roles. 2001’s “15 Minutes” marked the actress’ breakthrough, in a part that somewhat utilized her own Eastern European background. (She was born to immigrants and raised in a Ukrainian community in New Jersey.) In the film, she played a Czech import who witnesses a crime and falls for the investigating detective (Edward Burns). Winning critical raves and audience notice for her supporting turn, Farmiga had already lined up a host of projects to continue her upward climb.