BIRTHDAY: Fairuza Balk Turns 45

My favorite witch, aside from Anjelica Huston, turns 45 today and the career that Fairuza Balk has managed to blaze in Hollywood has given us decades of characters that would be impossible to replicate or remake. Hear that Hollywood? Impossible.

Photo by Rebecca Sapp

She was Dorothy in Disney's Return to Oz (1985) and from there Fairuza Balk has given us Shade from Gas Food Lodging (1992), Vicki Vallencourt from The Waterboy (1998) and Stacey from American History X (1998). Such a wide berth of characters and yet I covet Fairuza's portrayal of Nancy Downs from The Craft (1996) the most.

When the trailer for The Craft first emerged I was captivated. I was struck deep by the music from The Smiths. The brief glimpse at special effects were chilling, awe inspiring for the time, and then seeing Fairuza Balk as Nancy woke some shit up inside me. She was fantastic in that movie. Fairuza gave her character Nancy such a wide range of emotions but the one that stuck out was Nancy's rage and Fairuza had the eyes and bared teeth to pull it off.

Popping up every now and then in movies or television, Fairuza, from what I have found, mostly works on her art and other projects of passions, keeping her followers on multiple social media platforms informed.