VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Taissa Farmiga On 'We Have Always Lived In The Castle,' Part 1 (Photo: Erik Meers/uInterview.com)
Taissa Farmiga is an American actress most noted for her performance in the television series American Horror Story. In this biography, Farmiga tells her story in her own words.
She has also appeared in a number of films, including Higher Ground, directed by her sister and nominated for Satellite, Gotham, Sundance Film Festival and Oscar Awards.
Farmiga was born in Readington Township, New Jersey, on August 17, 1994 (Taissa Farmiga age: 27). She grew up in the township’s Whitehouse Station neighborhood with her six older siblings: Victor, Vera, Stephan, Nadia, Alexander and Laryssa. Their parents, Lubomyra and Michael Farmiga, work as a teacher and systems analyst, respectively. As Farmiga’s parents are Ukrainian-American and began homeschooling her after the fourth grade, she can understand but only partially speak the language. She is also adept at American Sign Language (ASL) after four years of classes.
Farmiga’s success story is an unusual one. She originally planned to be an accountant and had no intentions of acting, with only a second-grade school play under her belt. However, her sister Vera’s 2011 film Higher Ground called for someone resembling a younger Vera. As the movie’s lead actress and director, Vera felt Taissa – 15 at the time – was a suitable choice given the 21 years separating them.
When Higher Ground premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Taissa received high praise for her performance and decided to pursue acting as a full-time career. She was signed to talent agency ICM Partners the same year and secured the lead role of Violet Harmon on American Horror Story.
At age 16, Farmiga starred in Murder House, the first season of FX’s series American Horror Story. She secured the role of troubled teen Violet Harmon, daughter of Connie Britton’s and Dylan McDermott’s characters, in her first-ever acting audition.
Farmiga returned to American Horror Story for its third season, Coven, in 2013. She acted as a young witch named Zoe Benson and received high praise for her work. Three years later, she guest-starred as Sophie Green in an episode of American Horror Story: Roanoke. In August 2018, it was announced that Farmiga would play both Harmon and Benson in the eighth season of American Horror Story called Apocalypse.
Farmiga appeared in a number of productions between her stints on American Horror Story. In 2013, she played Sam Moore in Sofia Coppola’s film The Bling Ring, which was positively received at the Cannes Film Festival that year. She joined her sister Vera and actor Andy García in the romantic comedy At Middleton later in 2013. Soon after came Jorge Dorado’s psychological thriller Mindscape – otherwise known as Anna – in which Farmiga secured her first lead role. The next year, Farmiga played love interest Sarah Bransford in the crime drama Jamesy Boy.
2015 was a particularly successful year for Farmiga. The South by Southwest film festival featured three of her films: 6 Years (dir. Hannah Fidell), Share (a short drama by Pippa Bianco), and The Final Girls. In this horror-comedy, directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson, Farmiga plays the lead role of Max Cartwright. Her performance earned her a nomination for Best Actress at the 2015 Fright Meter Awards. Overall, Farmiga was heralded as a breakout actress at South by Southwest the year, further propelling her into stardom.
Also in 2015, Farmiga appeared in eight episodes of the ABC crime series Wicked City. She briefly acted onstage in the following year’s off-Broadway revival of Buried Child, starring Amy Madigan and Ed Harris. Farmiga acted with them again in Warren Beatty’s comedy Rules Don’t Apply, which received mixed reviews at the 2016 AFI Fest. At that year’s South by Southwest festival, Farmiga was praised for her performance alongside Ethan Hawke and John Travolta in the Western In a Valley of Violence.
Farmiga experimented with voice acting later in 2016 as Raven in the animated superhero film Justice League vs. Teen Titans. She voiced Raven again in the 2017 sequel, Teen Titans: The Judas Contract. In 2018, Farmiga starred in What They Had and The Long Dumb Road, which both premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
In September 2018, Farmiga played Sister Irene in The Nun, the fifth movie in the famed Conjuring franchise. She also acted in The Mule, starring Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper, and appeared in an episode of CBS’ 2019 Twilight Zone revival.
Farmiga played the lead role in the We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018), the film adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel starring Alexandra Daddario and Paula Malcomson. In May 2019, Farmiga sat down with uInterview to discuss the film. She described it as “a story about these two sisters, Constance and Merricat Blackwood, who live with their Uncle Julian in their family’s estate. Everyone else in their immediate family is dead, and these two sisters are shunned by the rest of the town, so they sort of have to create their own … little reality to live in. And everything’s going well until their cousin Charles comes to visit.”
Farmiga told uInterview exclusively that Merricat felt “threatened” by Charles and believed he had arrived “under the guise of trying to intervene and trying to change up what is good and right in their world.” To provide some backstory about Merricat’s character, Farmiga explained, “I adore her, but Merricat’s this little weirdo. She’s this little unusual young woman who sort of, at times, can be incredibly childlike and innocent, and then a minute later she could be infinitely aware and intelligent. She’s a contradiction; she’s uncomfortable in her own body, but all she wants to do is protect her sister.”
When asked about the filming process behind this movie, Farmiga had nothing but good things to report. She was especially happy to discuss the bonding that occurred between cast members on set. “We shot in the Wicklow Mountains,” Farmiga told uInterview, “and we were all just sort of holed up in this little castle, this little manor in the middle of Ireland, so we didn’t have anybody but each other. And when you’re playing kind of … a messed up family, you bond pretty quickly, you know what I mean? You have to have these connections.”
Farmiga gave glowing reviews of a few cast members in particular, namely Crispin Glover and Sebastian Stan. “Crispin Glover is obviously a legend and an incredible, incredible actor,” she said, “but he had such a distinct vision for [his character] Uncle Julian … When I heard he was cast, I was thrilled because I was like, ‘Oh, this is gonna be an interesting mind with an interesting take on the character, something I’m never gonna see before,’ and that’s absolutely true.” Farmiga explained how she tried to implement this originality into her own acting, citing Glover as a terrific professional role model.
Regarding Stan, Farmiga reported, “Sebastian’s a fun guy. He’s incredibly talented, just a joyous personality, loves to have fun.” She went on to say of the overall cast, “Genuinely, we all had fun. Everyone was there to play their very distinct character, and it was four very different personalities mixed in a scene, and the chemistry there was just fun to be a part of.”
Farmigia is rumored to have been dating 36-year-old director Hadley Klein since 2014.
“The horror aspect, the scary parts, are easy for me. I mean, I can get into that pretty easy because I get scared. You have to invest yourself in these characters.”
“You film a movie and you don’t get to see it until about a year later. When you watch it, you just know that you were a different person then than you are now, and you know that you’ve grown. It’s nice to know that you can take those experiences and learn from them, and incorporate them into the next one.”
“When I was younger, I didn’t have any aspirations to be an actress. A door was opened for me – my older sister directed her first film and put me in it. I was intrigued by it. I enjoyed it. I liked trying to understand other people’s emotions.”
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