Vera Farmiga Biography

A star player in independent films, Vera Farmiga is also known for her supporting roles in Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed (2006) and Jason Reitman‘s Up in the Air (2009).

A Ukrainian-American from rural New Jersey, Vera Farmiga studied drama in New York City and began her screen career in the late 1990s, in the Australian TV series Roar (starring Heath Ledger). She earned the respect of critics with her lead role as an addict in Down to the Bone (2004), played a cop in the short-lived TV series Touching Evil (2004), and had small but memorable roles in The Manchurian Candidate (2004, starring Denzel Washington) and Breaking and Entering (2006, starring Jude Law).

In The Departed, Farmiga played a confused, torn-between-two-lovers psychiatrist alongside stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, but that didn’t lead to Hollywood superstardom. Instead, Farmiga turned again to bigger roles in smaller films and focused on her home life in rural New York. Versatile in dramas (and horror — 2009’s The Orphan), Farmiga showed a light-hearted side as George Clooney‘s love interest in 2009’s Up in the Air, earning rave reviews as a sexy screen beauty as well as a serious actress.

Her other films include Higher Ground (2011, also directed by Farmiga), Source Code (2011, starring Jake Gyllenhaal), Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and the Sopranos reboot The Many Saints of Newark (2021). She starred as Norman Bates’s mom in the 2013 TV series Bates Motel, adapted from the classic Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho (1960).