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Life and Career
Mischa Anne Barton was born in London,
England, on January 24th, 1986, to an English father and Irish mother.
By the time she was 4 years old, the family moved to New York City,
where her father continued to work in the world of finance.
At the age of 8, Mischa and one of her two sisters were sent to summer
camp. One of the activities involved the children writing their own
monologues and performing them for their parents. Mischa wrote a piece
about turtles and her delivery was so impressive that an agent who was
scouting for talent told her parents they had a star on their hands.
Her parents were thrilled of course, but at the same time wondered if it
was an appropriate path for their daughter. When she was 9 and in the
fifth grade, Mischa decided that it was something she definitely wanted
to try.
She got her start after auditioning for the lead role in Tony Kushner's
play, Slavs!. Since the part required her to have a Russian accent, she
got herself an acting coach to master it. Not only did she get the role
but she also got to share the stage with future Oscar winner Marisa
Tomei.
Mischa's rave reviews led to other theatrical productions such as James
Lapine's Twelve Dreams, which was produced at the celebrated Lincoln
Center, and Where the Truth Lies and One Flea Spare, which were both
part of the New York Shakespeare Festival.
Doing theater was rewarding but Barton was hungry for more. In 1994, she
became a recurring character on the long-running ABC soap opera All My
Children, a job she held for a year. But in the meantime, her beauty was
also attracting interest.
Before she had entered her teens, Barton was signed to the Ford Modeling
Agency. In that capacity, she modeled in a Calvin Klein campaign and
worked for the likes of Gitano and Vogue. Mischa admits that the work is
difficult but very rewarding, since "it's every teenager's
dream."
But it was Barton's acting skills that gave her the most recognition.
One of her first feature film roles was in 1997's Lawn Dogs, opposite
Sam Rockwell. In 1999, she appeared in Pups, a modern take on Bonnie
& Clyde; the summer hit Notting Hill, with Julia Roberts and Hugh
Grant; and the international Bruce Willis blockbuster The Sixth Sense,
in which she played a young ghost seeking reparation.
For the next couple of years, Barton appeared with Jennifer Jason Leigh
and Drew Barrymore in Skipped Parts (2000), co-starred with Jessica Alba
in Paranoid (2000), starred alongside Melanie Griffith and Dominique
Swain in Tart (2001), appeared with Courtney Love and Lili Taylor in
Julie Johnson (2001), and starred in Lost and Delirious (2001), a film
that explored lesbianism at a private boarding school.
Barton demonstrated her talents once more as she returned to television
with a recurring role in the critically-acclaimed ABC show Once and
Again during its 2001-2002 season. In 2003, she acted with Madeleine
Stowe in the horror thriller, Octane.
But what is sure to make her popular to millions for years to come, is
her role in the new FOX television show, The O.C. In this primetime
melodrama geared toward young adults -- a Beverly Hills, 90210 clone as
some have branded it -- Mischa portrays a wealthy and popular Orange
County high school student who has difficulty adjusting to her
surroundings.
Although she still attends Manhattan's Professional Children's School,
the extraordinary popularity of her new TV show guarantees that we
haven't seen the last of Mischa Barton. In addition to being the subject
of magazine pictorials, she's currently appearing in Neutrogena print
ads and the new Enrique Iglesias video "Addicted."
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