Vera Farmiga's Real Name: Vera Farmiga

Quick answer: Vera Farmiga is documented professionally as Vera Farmiga. Encyclopedia.com gives her birth date as August 6, 1973, in Passaic County, New Jersey, while New Jersey Monthly describes her as an Irvington native (Encyclopedia.com; New Jersey Monthly).

Real name and early life

The two sources do not agree on a single birthplace wording: Encyclopedia.com says Passaic County, and the 2010 New Jersey Monthly profile calls her an Irvington native. This page records that difference rather than choosing silently. New Jersey Monthly says she grew up in a Ukrainian enclave centered on St. John's Ukrainian Catholic Church in Newark, and names her parents as Mikhail and Luba Farmiga, who, the magazine says, preserved that heritage for Vera and her siblings. She appeared in high-school plays at Hunterdon Central Regional High School, the same profile says, then studied at Syracuse University's School of Visual and Performing Arts. Encyclopedia.com records a B.F.A. from Syracuse and notes that as a teenager she toured with a folk-dancing group and later belonged to the Barrow Group in New York. The magazine, writing when she was 36, described her as an on-screen chameleon who said she cannot feel lukewarm about a character.

Career highlights

Early television work listed by Encyclopedia.com includes the series Roar (1997) and the films Rose Hill (1997) and Return to Paradise (1998). A turning point came with Down to the Bone (2004), for which Encyclopedia.com records a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and which New Jersey Monthly describes as a portrait of a working-class mother facing a drug problem. The magazine also points to her role as a police psychiatrist in Martin Scorsese's The Departed and as the wife of a concentration-camp commandant in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Her role opposite George Clooney in Up in the Air (2009) earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress, New Jersey Monthly says. Encyclopedia.com's earlier credits also include The Manchurian Candidate (2004) and the HBO film Iron Jawed Angels (2004).

Name notes for searchers

She is known professionally as Vera Farmiga. Searchers looking for Alex Goran in Up in the Air, for the psychiatrist in The Departed, or for her work in Down to the Bone are usually aiming at the same person. Encyclopedia.com also lists earlier series work including UC: Undercover and Touching Evil.