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Mia Kirshner Profile |
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Birth Date: January 25, 1975
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Birth Place: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Birth Name: Mia Kirshner
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Height: 5'4"
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Biography |
Born in Toronto on January 25, 1975, Mia Kirshner was raised
in Canada's largest city by her Bulgarian-born mother, Etti,
an English teacher, and her German-born father, Sheldon, a
journalist for The Canadian Jewish News. Her initial
interest in following in her father's line of work was
redirected toward acting after watching Vivien Leigh as
Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.
Kirshner's first onscreen appearance came as an extra in The
Freshman (1990), starring Matthew Broderick and Marlon
Brando, an experience that she found quite grueling.
Undeterred, she appeared that same year on the small screen
for a full season of Dracula: The Series, and racked up
several other Canadian and American television credits
before segueing into film.
From the beginning, Kirshner's dark beauty led her toward
roles ranging from disturbed to diabolically enticing. After
portraying a rebellious teenager intent on seducing her
mother's boyfriend in Cadillac Girls (1993), two provocative
roles under Canadian directors established her reputation:
the dominatrix in Denys Arcand's Love & Human Remains
(1993), and the youthful stripper with a surprising past in
Atom Egoyan's highly-lauded Exotica (1994).
Although her onscreen career was underway, she continued her
education by attending Montreal's McGill University to study
19th Century Russian Literature with a minor in film. All
the while, the modest actress kept her film career to
herself and avoided answering questions about her future.
But the ravishing thespian's work in Exotica attracted the
attention of American casting agents, who promptly got her
supporting roles in Murder in the First and the Southern
coming-of-age tale, The Grass Harp (both 1995). She
subsequently won a lead role in The Crow: City of Angels
(1996), in which she took advantage of her Goth looks to
portray a tattoo artist sporting an angel-wing tattoo across
her back that drove male viewers loco.
When Kirshner showed up for her Mad City audition in 1996,
she was late, underdressed and unprepared to meet the
movie's stars, Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta. She became
nervous, stretching a hole in her jeans and talking
incessantly, but unable to look anyone in the eye. Luckily,
her shyness was a blessing: she was reading for the part of
a nervous and eager TV reporter, and everyone in the room
thought she was talking to them in character.
Since Mad City (1997), Kirshner has had the luxury of taking
the time to pick and choose her projects. She continued to
appear in both lead and supporting roles in such independent
and/or small features as Saturn (1999), a drama that cast
her as a hedonistic girlfriend, as well as Out of the Cold
(1999), Cowboys and Angels (2000) and Century Hotel (2001).
Keeping busy well into the new millennium, Kirshner appeared
as a bomb-toting hijacker in the first season of the
real-time television series 24, as well as Not Another Teen
Movie (both 2001), a parody of the recent wave of high
school-themed films and also starring Lacey Chabert and
Jaime Pressly.
In The Sky Is Green, set for release in 2004, Kirshner plays
Mara alongside an all-star cast including Vince Vaughn,
Steve Buscemi and Saffron Burrows. And numerous episodes of
a Showtime drama to debut in the January 2004 season, The L
Word, have already been shot. In the cable series, Kirshner
stars as a woman of dubious sexuality, a trait she has
titillated her loyal fans with many times before.
Currently living in Los Angeles, Mia still likes to keep her
private life private. She's a lover of dance, and keeps in
shape by taking classes in ballroom dancing, salsa and jazz. |
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Other
Information |
Played Sarah Logan in the pilot for the TV show "D.C."
(2000) but the role was later re-cast.
The "Stuff" magazine cover she did with Chyler Leigh was the
first time that magazine ever featured multiple people on
the cover.
Raised in Toronto by her journalist father and mother, who
is a teacher.
She is a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. Her father,
Sheldon, a journalist for The Canadian Jewish News, was born
in a displaced person camp in Germany in 1946. He met her
mother, Etti, a Bulgarian Jewish refugee, in Israel.
Kirshner has a younger sister.
Ranked #38 in Stuff magazine's "102 Sexiest Women in the
World" (2002).
Her mother is Bulgarian. |
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