Vera Ann Farmiga (/fɑːrˈmiːɡə/ far-MEE-gə; born August 6, 1973) is an American actress.
Farmiga began her professional acting career on stage in the original Broadway production of Taking Sides (1996). She made her television debut in the Fox fantasy adventure series Roar (1997), and her feature film debut in the drama-thriller Return to Paradise (1998). Farmiga's breakthrough came in 2004 with her starring role as a drug addict in the drama Down to the Bone. She received further praise for the drama Nothing But the Truth (2008), and won critical acclaim for starring in the 2009 comedy-drama Up in the Air, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Farmiga made her directorial debut in 2011 with the acclaimed drama film Higher Ground, in which she also had the leading role. She had starring roles in the political thriller The Manchurian Candidate (2004), the crime drama The Departed (2006), the historical drama The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), the science fiction thriller Source Code (2011), the action thriller Safe House (2012), the legal drama The Judge (2014), the biographical drama The Front Runner (2018), the monster film Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and the crime drama The Many Saints of Newark (2021). She also starred in the Netflix miniseries When They See Us (2019), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, the Disney miniseries Hawkeye (2021), which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the AppleTV miniseries Five Days at Memorial (2022).
Farmiga portrayed paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren in the Conjuring Universe films The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 (2016), Annabelle Comes Home (2019), and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021). From 2013 to 2017, she starred as Norma Louise Bates in the A&E drama horror series Bates Motel, which earned her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. These performances, along with her lead roles in the films Joshua (2007) and Orphan (2009), established her as a scream queen.
Early life
Farmiga was born on August 6, 1973, in Clifton, New Jersey. Her parents are Ukrainians: Michael Farmiga, a systems analyst-turned-landscaper, and his wife Lubomyra "Luba" (née Spas), a schoolteacher. She has an older brother, Victor, and five younger siblings: Stephan, Nadia, Alexander, Laryssa (who was born with spina bifida), and Taissa. Her maternal grandparents, Nadia (née Pletenciw; 1925–2014) and Theodor Spas (1921–1990), met at a displaced persons camp in Karlsfeld during World War II. As a child, Farmiga converted with her family from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to Pentecostalism.
Farmiga considers herself to be "100% Ukrainian American". She was raised in an insular Ukrainian American community in Irvington, New Jersey, with Ukrainian as her native language. She did not learn English until she started kindergarten at age six. When she was 12, the family moved from Irvington to Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. She attended St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic School in Newark, New Jersey, and toured with a Ukrainian folk-dancing ensemble, Syzokryli, during her teen years. In addition to being a semi-professional folk dancer, she is also a classically trained pianist. Farmiga was a member of Plast.
In 1991, she graduated from Hunterdon Central Regional High School. During her junior year there, she found acting after being benched during a varsity soccer game; her friend convinced her to audition for the school production of The Vampire, and she won the lead role of Lady Margaret. Farmiga went on to study Theatre at Syracuse University, and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1995. In her final year at Syracuse, she portrayed Nina Zarechnaya in The Seagull at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, and the production won the top prize. Her drama professor, Gerardine Clark, stated: "We'd never have won had she not nailed the fourth act. A number of the judges told me that."
