Taissa Farmiga ( ; born August 17, 1994) is an American actress. Born in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, she is the younger sister of actress Vera Farmiga. Her numerous appearances in horror films have established her as a scream queen.
Farmiga was encouraged to begin acting by her sister, and subsequently made her debut in her sister's film Higher Ground (2011). Thereafter, she rose to prominence for her work on the anthology series American Horror Story, starring in the seasons Murder House (2011), Coven (2013–2014), Roanoke (2016) and Apocalypse (2018). Her early film roles include the romantic comedy At Middleton (2013), the crime drama The Bling Ring (2013) and the psychological thriller Mindscape (2013), the latter of which was her first starring film role.
Farmiga was lauded for her performances in the comedy slasher film The Final Girls (2015), and the drama films 6 Years (2015) and Share (2015), all of which premiered at South by Southwest, which led her to be named one of the breakout stars of the festival. She has also provided the voice of Raven in the DC Animated Movie Universe (2016–2020), starred in the comedy films Rules Don't Apply (2016) and The Long Dumb Road (2018), the drama films In a Valley of Violence (2016) and What They Had (2018) and the supernatural thriller film The Nun (2018). Farmiga headlined the procedural drama series Wicked City (2015), and made her stage debut in the off-Broadway revival of the drama play Buried Child (2016).
Early life
Farmiga was born in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, on August 17, 1994, the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants Lubomyra Spas, a schoolteacher, and Michael Farmiga, a systems analyst. She has six older siblings named Victor, Vera, Stephan, Nadia, Alexander, and Laryssa, the last of whom was born with spina bifida. Her maternal grandparents met at Karlsfeld, a sub-camp of the Dachau concentration camp system, during World War II. Farmiga attended public school until fourth grade, after which she began homeschooling. She has stated that she understands the Ukrainian language but can only partially speak it. She is proficient in American Sign Language, having taken classes for four years. Farmiga was raised Pentecostal as her sister Vera and the rest of the family had already been converts from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
Career
2011–2014: Early work and television breakthrough
Although Farmiga initially planned to become an accountant, she was persuaded by her sister, Vera Farmiga, to appear in her directorial debut drama Higher Ground, where she was cast as the 16-year-old version of the lead character Corinne Walker. Shortly after its premiere at the 2011 Sundance, where Farmiga garnered rave reviews for her performance, she was signed to talent agency ICM Partners.
That same year, Farmiga starred in the first season of FX's anthology series American Horror Story, which launched her to worldwide prominence. Murder House, where she played Violet Harmon, the troubled adolescent daughter of Vivien (Connie Britton) and Ben Harmon (Dylan McDermott). She secured the role of Violet Harmon in her first professional acting audition. She next joined the cast of Sofia Coppola's crime satire The Bling Ring, based on the real life group of the same name, portraying 17-year-old wild child Sam Moore. The film opened in Un Certain Regard at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival to generally positive reviews. She portrayed Audrey Martin, an uptight teen touring a college campus, in the romantic comedy At Middleton, co-starring with her sister Vera and Andy García. The film premiered at the 2013 Seattle International Film Festival and received a mixed to positive response from critics.
Farmiga starred as Zoe Benson, a young witch afflicted with a dark and dangerous power in American Horror Story: Coven (20132014), for which she received critical acclaim. She had her first leading film role as Anna Greene in Jorge Dorado's psychological thriller Mindscape, which premiered at the 2013 Sitges Film Festival. Her performance in Mindscape was lauded by critics; Fotogramas, Spain's oldest film magazine, described her as "hypnotizing", comparing her to a young Hannibal Lecter, and La Razón called her "the hypnotic Farmiga, the precocious youngster with ambiguous and intelligent class". She next co-starred as Sarah, the main character's love interest, in the biographical crime drama Jamesy Boy (2014).