What Vera Farmiga Did Before The Conjuring (& What She's Done Since)
Actress Vera Farmiga has become famous among scary movie fans for taking on the role of Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring and its sequels, but she’s also seen success in other roles both inside and outside of the horror genre. Her breakout role was as Kerrie in Return to Paradise in 1998, and throughout the early 2000s she went on to act in The Opportunists, Autumn in New York, 15 Minutes, Dust, Love in the Time of Money, Dummy, Down to the Bone, and Mind the Gap. She gained further fame in 2004 in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, starring Denzel Washington. In 2006 alone, she played Teresa Gazelle in Running Scared, Oana in Breaking and Entering, and Dr. Madolyn Madden—Leonardo DiCaprio’s love interest—in The Departed.
Farmiga's first foray into the horror genre came in 2007, with her role as Abby Cairn opposite Sam Rockwell’s Brad Cairn in Joshua, an American psychological horror movie centering on a Manhattan family that’s tormented by the sadistic behavior of the youngest son, Joshua. The following year, Farmiga went on to star in In Transit, Nothing But the Truth, and The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, among other feature films. In 2009, her second horror stint came with the movie Orphan; she played Kate Coleman who, with her husband (Peter Sarsgaard) adopts a mysterious young girl who goes on to wreak havoc on their family. That same year, Farmiga starred in Up In The Air opposite George Clooney. From 2010 until 2013, she held roles in Henry’s Crime, Higher Ground, Source Code, Goats, and Safehouse.
In 2013, which saw her act in At Middleton and Closer to the Moon, Farmiga starred as Lorraine Warren—a character based on a real-life paranormal investigator and alleged clairvoyant and medium of the same name—in the first installment of The Conjuring film franchise. The movie focuses on how the Warrens—Lorraine along with her husband Ed, also a paranormal investigator—come to the assistance of the Perron family, who are experiencing paranormal events in their Rhode Island farmhouse. The film is based on real events. For her part in the movie, Farmiga was nominated for “Best Scared-As-S**t Performance” at the MTV Movie Awards.
Farmiga would reprise her role as Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring 2 in 2016, following stints in The Judge, starring Robert Downey Jr., and Special Correspondents, starring Ricky Gervais. From 2017 through 2019, Farmiga had roles in movies including Unspoken, The Commuter, Boundaries, The Front Runner, Skin, Captive State, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. It was in late 2019 that she took on the role of Lorraine yet again, in Annabelle Comes Home. In 2020, Farmiga will play the role again in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, which is slated for a September 2020 release. She will also be in The Sopranos movie, The Many Saints of Newark, as Livia Soprano; this film has been marked as in post-production.
Outside of The Conjuring and the rest of the film world, Farmiga has had success in television—most notably, the horror show Bates Motel. She played Norma Louise Bates opposite Freddie Highmore’s Norman Bates in the A&E series from 2013-2017, garnering praise from critics. Farmiga was nominated at the Emmy Awards, the Critics’ Choice Television Awards, the Satellite Awards, and the Television Critics Association; she won a People’s Choice Award for "Favorite Cable TV Actress" in 2016 and a Saturn Award for "Best Actress on Television" in 2014 and 2015. Following Bates Motel, Farmiga starred in an episode of Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, and just last year played lawyer Elizabeth Lederer in the American crime tragedy miniseries When They See Us, written and directed by Ava DuVernay.