Vera Farmiga

The Oscar-nominated actress who plays Lorraine Warren across five Conjuring films.

Vera Farmiga, born August 6, 1973, is an American actress and singer who plays the paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring, The Conjuring 2, Annabelle Comes Home, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and The Conjuring: Last Rites. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Up in the Air in 2009.

Born in Clifton, New Jersey, to Ukrainian parents, she grew up speaking Ukrainian in Irvington and did not learn English until kindergarten at six.

Quick Facts

Birth name: Vera Ann Farmiga
Born: 6 August 1973
Birthplace: Clifton, New Jersey, U.S.
Education: Syracuse University
Occupation: Actress; Singer
Years active: 1996–present (actress); 2024–present (musician)
Children: 2
Relatives: Taissa Farmiga (sister); Adriana Farmiga (cousin)

Facts from the source article.

Background

She found acting in her junior year of high school after being sidelined in a soccer game, studied theatre at Syracuse University and made her Broadway debut in the original production of Taking Sides in 1996. Her breakthrough came as a drug addict in Down to the Bone in 2004, followed by The Manchurian Candidate, The Departed and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

Joshua and Orphan established her as a scream queen before the Warren role. She made her directing debut with Higher Ground in 2011, in which she also starred, and later appeared in Source Code, Safe House, The Judge, Godzilla: King of the Monsters and The Many Saints of Newark.

On television she earned Primetime Emmy nominations as Norma Bates in Bates Motel and for When They See Us, and appeared in Hawkeye and Five Days at Memorial. She is a classically trained pianist and toured with the Ukrainian folk-dance ensemble Syzokryli in her teens.