I have a very logical brain, says Taissa

Taissa Farmiga grew up as the youngest of seven children born to Ukrainian-american parents living in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, with Vera the second-oldest. Even with a sister in the business, she didn’t plan a career in acting. A math whiz, Farmiga set her sights on becoming an accountant. “I have a very logical brain and I love math and numbers,” she explained. “I love finance. To this day, I’m my accountant’s favourite client.” As a favour, however, she agreed to appear in Vera’s directorial debut, Higher Ground (2011). Her sister was also starring, and needed to cast the younger version of her character. “I was only 15,” Farmiga said. “My only acting experience was a secondgrade play.” The film earned raves for both sisters, and that set Farmiga on a different career path. At 16 she was cast as troubled teenager Violet Harmon on the first season of American Horror Story, in her first-ever audition. That led to such films as At Middleton

(2013), Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring (2013), Anna (2013), The Final Girls (2015), 6 Years

(2015), In the Valley of Violence

(2016) and Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply (2016). Up next: the family drama We Have Always Lived in a Castle,

co-starring Crispin Glover and Sebastian Stan, and Clint Eastwood’s The Mule, in which Eastwood will play a 90-yearold horticulturist and World War II vet who is forced to transport $3 million worth of cocaine through Michigan for a Mexican drug cartel. “I never had any aspirations to become an actress,” Farmiga said.

“Now I can’t live without it. I love to break down the emotions and get inside the head of someone else.”