Mia Kirshner Movies
Canadian actress Mia Kirshner is known in her native country and beyond for her portrayals of moderately to deeply troubled young women who often harbor dark secrets. Born in Toronto in 1975, where she was raised by a journalist father and a teacher mother, Kirshner broke into films in 1993. That year, she starred as a bad seed teenager intent on seducing her mother's boyfriend in Cadillac Girls and played a dominatrix in Denys Arcand's Love and Human Remains.Kirshner had another career breakthrough the following year playing a young stripper with a surprising past identity in Atom Egoyan's widely acclaimed Exotica. The actress' work in the celebrated film attracted the notice of American casting agents, who promptly cast her in supporting roles in Murder in the First (1995) and the Southern gothic coming-of-age tale The Grass Harp (also 1995). Although she subsequently won lead roles in The Crow: City of Angels (1996) -- in which she played up her dark Goth looks as the tattoo artist who befriends Vincent Perez -- and Mad City (1997), which cast her as journalist Dustin Hoffman's intern, Kirshner has had difficulty making a name for herself in Hollywood. She continues to appear in both lead and supporting roles in such independent and/or small features as Saturn (1999), a drama that cast her as the hedonistic girlfriend of a young man (Scott Caan) caring for his Alzheimer's-stricken father. Keeping busy well into the new millennium, Kirshner would later appear in 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. A featured role in the popular Showtime series The L Word found Kirshner continuing to court success on the small screen, and in 2006 she would head back to the big screen as the ill-fated actress who sparks a legendary Hollywood investigation in director Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- 1995
Needing to escape Los Angeles and start a new life fast, petty gangster Johnny Rich moves his family to Alaska and opens a nightclub. Meanwhile his teenage daughter secretly wishes for a more normal family life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Treat Williams, Mia Kirshner, (more)
This shocking prison drama was inspired by a true story. In 1938, Henri Young (Kevin Bacon), sentenced to Alcatraz for stealing $5, attempted to escape from prison with three other prisoners. One of the escapees was captured, and to curry favor with Warden Glenn (Gary Oldman), he informed on the others. Young was soon brought back to custody, and was to be punished by spending 19 days in solitary confinement. Nineteen days stretched into three years, in which Young was kept in a pit with no light, no toilet, no furniture, and nothing to read. Young emerged from solitary a vengeful madman, and he quickly murdered the convict who turned him in. Young was put on trial for the killing, and assigned a first-time public defender, James Stamphill (Christian Slater). Stamphill was horrified by Young's tales of the conditions at Alcatraz, and he used them as the basis of his defense for his client, believing that anyone would be driven to madness and murder if they had been treated the same way as Young. Murder in the First also features Embeth Davidtz, William H. Macy, Brad Dourif, and R. Lee Ermey. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Christian Slater, Kevin Bacon, (more)
Based on the novel by Truman Capote, this often-witty coming-of-age drama looks at a young man growing up with an unusual family in the Deep South in the 1940s. After the death of his parents, Collin Fenwick (Edward Furlong) finds himself living in a small town with two of his aunts, Dolly (Piper Laurie) and Verena (Sissy Spacek). Verena is the more stable of the two, an entrepreneur who controls a number of local businesses and rules the roost with a firm hand. Dolly, on the other hand, is a gentle eccentric who claims to hear the voices of the dead as the wind whistles through the grass, and has developed a homemade concoction that supposedly cures dropsy. Dolly's potion attracts the attention of Morris Ritz (Jack Lemmon), a smooth-talking con man from Chicago who wants to snatch the formula away from her. Along the way, Collin also gets to know Catherine (Nell Carter), Verena and Dolly's quick-witted house maid; Amos (Roddy McDowall), a barber who is also the town's one-man rumor mill; Charlie Cool (Walter Matthau), a charmingly cynical retired judge with an opinion about everything; and Sister Ida (Mary Steenburgen), an accordion-toting traveling evangelist who has had a heroic brood of 13 children without benefit of marriage. The Grass Harp was directed by Charles Matthau, the son of Walter Matthau. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Piper Laurie, Sissy Spacek, (more)
The action in Canadian provocateur Atom Egoyan's cryptic Exotica revolves largely around the strip club, which lends the film its name, a faux-tropical hothouse where young female dancers cater to their customers' sexual and psychological needs. Among the regulars is Francis (Bruce Greenwood), a troubled taxman haunted by Christina, a young stripper played by Mia Kirshner. As the film hypnotically unfolds, their relationship is slowly explored, the narrative dovetailing with the stories of a gay pet shop owner (Don McKellar), the Exotica's pregnant owner (Arsinee Khanjian), and its embittered DJ (Elias Koteas). Like all of Egoyan's films, Exotica is a riddle, its answers only fostering more questions. The director's recurring themes of family breakdowns, voyeurism and obsession are all in the mix here as well, but essayed with a new clarity of vision and intensity. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bruce Greenwood, Mia Kirshner, (more)
- 1993
- R
Based upon a play by screenwriter Brad Fraser, Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love, Denys Arcand's dark-humored drama Love and Human Remains follows the lives of a group of young Canadians, with a particular focus on their romantic and sexual experiences. The central characters are two roommates, David and Candy. The cynical, witty David is a former television actor turned waiter, the lonely, dissatisfied Candy a book critic; the two were formerly lovers, before David proclaimed his homosexuality. Candy is also questioning her sexuality, having begun a lesbian affair after wondering if her failures with men indicates she might be happier with a woman; meanwhile, David is becoming acquainted with Kane, a handsome, young busboy of uncertain sexuality who idolizes the older David. The other members of the ensemble are also somehow connected to the roommates, through friendship or romance, including Benita, a young dominatrix and part-time psychic, and Bernie, a boastful but insecure young businessman. The couplings and shifting relationships of these characters are intercut with the rather more severe story of a serial murderer who has been terrorizing the city's women, allowing Arcand to place the film's melodramatic elements in an edgier context. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Thomas Gibson, Ruth Marshall, (more)
- 1993
- R
Mia Kirshner plays Page, a troublesome teenager whose low self-esteem has manifested itself into petty thievery. After stealing a car, Page is hauled into court, where she is placed in the custody of her divorced mom (Jennifer Dale). Ordered to move into her mother's Nova Scotia home, Page is resentful of the restrictions placed upon her movements. Before long, she hatches a nasty revenge. The plan: to seduce mom's new boy friend (Gregory Harrison), then laugh in both their faces. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jennifer Dale, Mia Kirshner, (more)
