Fairuza Talks About Her Life
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What Ru Has To Say For Herself
"I was born near Point Reyes, just north of San Francisco, and lived on a ranch with all these kind hippie-ish people. My dad was a traveling Middle Eastern musician and pretty much split on us. My mom was a belly dancer. After Point Reyes we kind of lived in a car, just traveling around. Finally, she got a gig in Vancouver, liked it and decided it would be a good place to raise me. I got my first acting job there, on a TV movie. I was seven. Then I got the part of Dorothy in "Return To Oz", which was filming in England. So I moved to London with my mom until I was fourteen, then to Paris to do "Valmont" for about a year. It was wonderful, one of the best times of my life. I was very shy, very internalized, reading a lot. But I could speak French and just hang out in cafes and read and be by myself, and people respect that there."
At this point, Fairuza excuses herself to go to the bathroom. Then she jumps ahead to her life back in Vancouver (at age sixteen), where she was enrolled in real-life high school.
"I survived for about two days. I am very dyslexic and just wasn't a normal kid. And the kids were nasty to me. Well, not nasty, but just couldn't relate. I wore all black and was really into punk and Goth and industrial music. And I just didn't understand why you couldn't smoke and have coffee in class. I kind of half dropped out and was half kicked out. I had this math teacher, and he looked like a cop on PCP, he had this red face with veins that would pop out of his neck. I don't remember his name, which is too bad. Anyway, I just wouldn't get match, and he was like, "What are you, retarded?' And I lost my temper and hucked my textbook at him, nailed him. I went home and told my mom I wasn't doing this anymore, and she was like okay. I started doing correspondence classes but only made it to like grade nine. Traditional school just wasn't for me. I hate the attention span of a two-year-old."


Some Other Things About Fairuza Balk
That Might Not Make You a Better Person but
You Really Ought To Know
She's got a deep raspy, intimidating laugh. She reads a lot of psychology and is even about to quote some to me until she stops herself and says, "I don't want this to sound like a lot of interviews where people are totally quoting books they've never read. I hate that, and women especially do it all the time. Have you noticed that? It's like they just bought a book of quotations." She's glad she never went to high school. she sang at the Royal Albert Hall as a part of a choir when she was nine. She's not a low-salt kind of person; she's a "more is more is more kind of person." She knows the difference between Vulcans and Romulans. She likes gory comics. She spends her money on restaurants, books and CDs, "in that order." Yet, she often doesn't remember to eat ("sometimes I get really lazy and just won't want to deal,") and she sometimes "lives off 7-Eleven burritos." She says "fan-perfect," which is like perfect and fantastic together, but better, sort of. She has met her dad only once but harbors no ill will toward him. She's still very close to her mom. She would love to be Sharon Stone "for like a second." She has just started working out again, and, secretly, she has always wanted to be a ballerina.


Some Preliminary Notes on Fairuza Balk You
Might Want to Know Before Going Out With Her
Other than "The Craft", you may have seen Fairuza Balk in these movies: "The Island Of Dr. Moreau" (in which Marlon Brando wears a big white sheet for most of the film, and Fairuza plays a brooding but attractive half-cat/half-possum thing); "Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead"; "Imaginary Crimes" (with Harvey Keitel!); "Gas Food Lodging"; "Valmont"; and "Return To Oz" (Fairuza's first film; she was ten and played Dorothy).
Also, she sleeps very late--don't call her before around three in the afternoon. (And if you do, ask for Ann, her roommate, who is very nice, and usually awake.) She was once on the cover of Vanity Fair, with about fifteen other "young, hot" actresses. She has six tattoos, each of which no doubt represents something meaningful. Her family can be traced back to Easter European gypsies and includes Black Irish, Cherokee, French and Dutch ancestry. The name "Fairuza" is an Arabic word meaning, roughly, turquoise. The best thing that's been said about her appeared in some British magazine and was: "She's like a Winona Ryder who won't fuck off to make lots of bonnet movies. Hopefully." She loves sushi, but getting stoned makes her a bit paranoid.


"People tell me I'm really dark," she says, "I'm not. I just don't pretend to be anything I'm not. I could have been been totally famous or whatever, but that's not my thing at all. I want to make people feel. Touch people. Not just be another face."