A Conversation with Thora Birch

Your foray into the entertainment industry came at a very early age, when you were only four years old!My very first commercial was for California Raisins. It was the last commercial that they shot using actors instead of those little dancing raisins. The premise of the commercial was the crazy things that young children would do to procure snacks. It was just a montage of different images. My image was that I was sitting in front of an empty fridge… all the contents are spilled out on the floor. It was like one of those “ah, gotcha” moments, and I remember them handing me this hotdog and a jar of peanut butter. They were like, “Okay, dip the hotdog into the peanut butter!” I was like, ‘That’s disgusting, but okay, that’s what they want me to do, so…’ (Laughs) That’s the only memory I have of that.Then you jumped right into a diversity of movie genres. All I Want for Christmas (1991), which is a really great movie with Ethan Embry, then Patriot Games (1992) with Harrison Ford, followed...