Isabelle Fuhrman

Isabelle Fuhrman (born February 25, 1997) is an American teen actress. Fuhrman is best known for playing Esther in Orphan.

Life and career

Isabelle Fuhrman was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Atlanta. Her Soviet-born mother,Elina Fuhrman, is a journalist, and her father, Nick Fuhrman, was at one time the chairman of the Republican Party in Dane County, Wisconsin. She has an older sister, Madeline Fuhrman.

Fuhrman's acting career began at the age of seven, when a casting director from Cartoon Network spotted her waiting for her sister and cast her for one of the shows, “Cartoon Fridays.” Fuhrman made her big screen debut just a few years later in the 2007 drama Hounddog. The same year, Fuhrman was chosen to star in the movie Orphan alongside Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard. Fuhrman was cast through an exhaustive nationwide search of young actresses to portray the lead in the Warner Bros. collaboration between Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way andJoel Silver’s Dark Castle Entertainment. It was DiCaprio who discovered Fuhrman through an audition tape and decided he wouldn't make Orphan without her.

Fuhrman's other credits include the role of Gretchen Dennis (aka Girl Ghost) opposite Jennifer Love Hewitt on the hit TV show Ghost Whisperer, Grace O'Neil in the pilot episode of the 2006 television series Justice, and a number of national commercials like Pizza Hut and K-Mart. Her performance as Gretchen Dennis in Ghost Whisperer earned her a Young Artist Award nomination. Fuhrman also appeared in comedy skits on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and she is known to have provided character voices for Cartoon Network's "Cartoon Fridays".

Fuhrman has been cast in the lead role of Angie Vanderveer in the upcoming comedy thriller Salvation Boulevard, based on the novel by Larry Beinhart. Fuhrman is part of an all-star ensemble cast which includes Pierce Brosnan, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Connelly and Ed Harris. The film is slated for release in 2011.

Her next project is the starring role of Sara Crewe in the modern remake of the classic novel, A Little Princess. Fuhrman's other releases include Ben Stassen's 3D animated feature Sammy's Adventures: The Secret Passage where she played the voice of Hatchling Shelly, a young turtle who loses track of her friend Sammy who travels the world for 50 years as it is changed by global warming. Her film Salvation Boulevard premiered at Sundance Film Festival January 23rd - 24th in Utah. Fuhrman quotes 'Salvation boulevard is a great film!' Her mother Elina Fuhrman also quoted 'Loved the salvation Boulevard premiere! Lots of laughter in the audience!'

Furman now attends a private school in Southern California and is in the 8th grade.

Hobbies and Charitable Work

Fuhrman is an avid knitter and enjoys creating arts and crafts in her free time. As she discussed in an interview with Craft Ideas Weekly in December 2010, Fuhrman first got interested in knitting during the filming of the movie Orphan when co-star Vera Farmiga passed time on set working on knitting projects.

Fuhrman was approached by Save The Children in 2010 to be a celebrity advocate for their "Caps For Good" project. She and several volunteers with Save The Children have helped knit hundreds of baby caps in an effort to reduce the death rate of newborns in developing countries.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Status
2006	Justice	Grace O'Neil	TV
2007	Hounddog	Grasshopper
2008	Ghost Whisperer	Gretchen Dennis	TV
2009	Orphan	Esther
	Children of the Corn	(voice)
2010	Sammy's Adventures: The Secret Passage	Hatchling Shelly (voice)
	The Whole Truth	Lyric	TV
2011	Pleading Guilty	Carrie	TV
	Salvation Boulevard	Angie	filming

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