By the time six-year-old Thora Birch made her feature film debut with a small role in Purple People Eater (1988), she was already a veteran actress with two years worth of television commercial and series work under her dimunitive belt. Birch attracted real notice after playing the neighbor of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson in the moving family drama Paradise, (1991). Afterwards, her parts began to increase, first with a supporting role as Harrison Ford's daughter in Patriot Games (1992) (she reprised the role in 1994's Clear and Present Danger), and then as one of the three kids who inadvertantly bring three witches back to life in Hocus Pocus (1993). Birch's first teenage role was to play a young Melanie Griffith in the nostalgic Now and Then (1995). Since then, she has continued to appear in feature films, starring in 1999 as Kevin Spacey's daughter in the highly-anticipated American Beauty. The same year, she had an uncredited but pivotal role in Wayne Wang's drama Anywhere But Here, starring Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman.