Mischa Barton

Real Name  :  Mischa Anne Marsden Barton
Born             :  24 January 1986
Occupation   :  Actress, model

Personal Life

Mischa Anne Marsden Barton born 24 January 1986 is an English and American film, television, and stage actress, and occasional fashion model. She began her acting career on the stage, appearing in Tony Kushner's Slavs! and took the lead in James Lapine's Twelve Dreams at New York's Lincoln Center. She made her screen debut, making a guest appearance on the American soap opera All My Children (1996). She then voiced a character on the Nickelodeon cartoon series KaBlam! (1996–1997). Her first major film role was as the protagonist of Lawn Dogs (1997), an acclaimed drama co-starring Sam Rockwell. She continued acting, appearing in major box office pictures such as the romantic comedy, Notting Hill (1999) and M. Night Shyamalan's psychological thriller, The Sixth Sense (1999). She also starred in the critically acclaimed indie crime drama Pups (1999).

She later appeared in the independent drama, Lost and Delirious (2001) and played Evan Rachel Wood's girlfriend during a guest-arc on ABC's Once and Again (2001–2002). She is best known for her role as Marissa Cooper in the Fox television series The O.C. (2003–2006), for which she received two Teen Choice Awards and a Prism Award nomination. The role catapulted Barton into mainstream fame, and Entertainment Weekly named her the "It Girl" of 2003.

She has since appeared in the comedy remake St Trinian's (2007), the Richard Attenborough-directed drama Closing the Ring (2007) and Assassination of a High School President (2008). She returned to television, starring in the short-lived Ashton Kutcher-produced CW series, The Beautiful Life: TBL (2009). She is currently performing in the Irish stage production of Steel Magnolias.

She was born in Hammersmith, West London, to an Irish mother, Nuala (née Quinn), a photographer, and an English father, Paul Marsden Barton, a foreign exchange broker from Manchester. She has two sisters, younger Hania and elder Zoe, a barrister in London. Her father's work took the family to New York City when Barton was six, and in 2006, ten days after her twentieth birthday, she became a naturalised citizen of the United States. She has retained her British citizenship and, in reference to her English roots, states "I actually feel more comfortable in England a lot of the time", yet stresses that, "I like people to discern that I'm an English-Irish girl who grew up in New York."  Barton graduated from the Professional Children's School in Manhattan in 2004, and took a summer short course called Acting Shakespeare at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, in June and July 2006, at Sir Richard Attenborough's urging, after he directed her in Closing the Ring.