Vera Farmiga

Vera Farmiga is an American actress who received an Academy Award nomination for best performance in her supporting role, opposite George Clooney, in Up in the Air (2009).

Farmiga, second of seven children, was born in New Jersey to Ukrainian parents. She initially dreamed of becoming an optometrist, but changed her mind, and studied acting at Syracuse University's School of Performing Arts. In 1996, she began her professional acting career, making her Broadway debut, as an understudy, in the play "Taking Sides." Her stage credits included performances in "The Tempest," "The Glass Menagerie," "Hamlet" and "Second-Hand Smoke" (1997). At the same time, she made her television debut as the female lead in Fox’s “Roar” opposite then-unknown Heath Ledger.

In 1998, Farmiga made her big screen debut in the drama, “Return to Paradise,” then played daughters of Christopher Walken in “The Opportunists” (2000) and Richard Gere in “Autumn in New York” (2000). She starred as a working-class mother struggling to keep her life and marriage together while hiding her drug addiction in “Down to the Bone” (2004), for which she won Best Actress Awards from the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

Farmiga's acting talent shone in a range of characters, from her memorable role as the senator's daughter, opposite Jon Voight, in “The Manchurian Candidate” (2004), to a mental patient in an insane asylum in “Neverwas” and as a doctor in “The Departed” (2006). In 2010, Vera Farmiga received an Academy Award nomination for best performance in a supporting role, opposite George Clooney, in “Up in the Air” (2009), which received six Oscar nominations.

In 2011, she made her directorial debut with “Higher Ground” (2011), where she also appears in the leading role as Corinne. She also portrayed paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren in “The Conjuring”.

The actress has once again found critical success, this time on the small screen, with her role as the iconic Norma Bates in “Bates Motel.”