| At the
tender age of 10, the blue-eyed, brown-haired youngster answered a
12-city open call and beat out 800 girls to land the lead role in 1985's
"Return To Oz,"
the ballyhooed sequel to the classic "Wizard Of Oz." Fairuza
Balk enjoyed the filming, except the time she had to "lie
in the cold mud when I was suffering from a virus." Fairuza
(whose name means "turquoise" in Turkish) had previously
portrayed Loretta Swit's daughter in an ABC special titled "The
Best Christmas Pageant Ever" (1983), and played Stephanie
Powers's offspring in a TV drama, "Deceptions."
Her mother, a former flamenco and belly dancer, admitted: "I am a
little worried about how Fairuza will cope with
rejection, because she had gotten every part she has tried
for." After the box office failure of Oz,
a $25 million bust, Fairuza had four years to cope with
rejection...
She resurfaced as the virtuous Cecile in 1989's "Valmont" adapted from the same source material as the higher grossing but inferior "Dangerous Liasions." One critic made the inevitable comparison: "For the almost etheral Uma Thurman, who played the young virgin in the earlier version, there is the delightful Fairuza Balk, who seems closer to Shakespeare's Juliet than to innocent little Cecile." But Fairuza finally deserted her "child star image" when she checked-in for "Gas Food Lodging." One critic praised "the Lolitaesque allure she brought to the naive romantic." Ingenews Born: 1974 Fairuza's 1993 made-for-TV movie proved controversial enough to server as one of the catalysts for Congress "cleaning up the tube." Note one writer, "Balk, 18, brought higher purpose than acting" to ABC's "Murder In The Heartland." "It was my job to prove that Caril was innocent," she declared. Fairuza played 14-year-old Caril Ann Fugate, the girl-friend of Nebraska's legendary Charles Starkweather, who was put to death in 1959 after his 44-hour, .22 caliber rampage. Convicted on an accessory-to-murder charge, Fugate spent 18 years in prison--all the while and to this day maintaining her innocent. Raved a reviewer: "Crafting her Heartland performance with a Streep-like single-mindedness striking in one so young, Balk devoured acounts of the Starkweather case. "I took on Caril's pain," she says. "When I was in her place, it was terrifying to know what it was like for her." Balk tried to meet with Fugate but was thwarted by the former prisoner's desire for privacy (At age 32, Fugate was released from prison in 1976). Since then, Balk has compsed a letter but hasn't yet sent it." The critic continued: "Her performance is meant to show Fugate that at least one person believes that if your boyfriend starts shooting people, you do what he says." "It's her life," Balk believes. "But for a lot of people, it will just be entertainment." ABS censors were nervous about the movie--especially Starweather's realistic "execution" scene. |