Lauren Ambrose vs. Thora Birch
Battle of the Petulant Pouters

There was a time when all a young woman had to do to get an acting job was show up at an audition wearing a belly shirt, speak her lines with a minimum of fuss or coaching, and either be under the age of twenty, or convincingly look as though she was. (That time, of course, was circa 1999, when the WB still had a whole slate of teen dramas to staff and Dimension Films had a stack of scripts to sub-par scripts to vomit into theatres.) Now that the teen boom is apparently over, we require a little more in the way of actual talent from youthful performers. Fortunately, both Thora Birch and Lauren Ambrose have more going for them than chipmunk cheeks and the willingness to display their midriffs.

Ambrose, for her part, started building her career cred early, launching her career with several guest roles on the gritty (gritty!) Law & Order, stretching beyond the usual teen melodrama demanded of the characters in Capeside by playing, first, the school-aged daughter of a man murdered by his sociopathic son, and, later, a mentally challenged young woman who is the controversial victim in a rape trial. Okay, granted, no one would class Can't Hardly Wait as anything other than cookie-cutter teen pap (the participation of Jennifer Love Hewitt pretty much dictates that), and Party of Five -- though (in its day) a lot less annoying than the bulk of teen soaps -- was squarely targeted at adolescents. But even in Ambrose's short list of film credits, an astute observer can make out the shape of a compelling career in embryonic form. Following close on the heels of her dual role in a savage beach-movie parody, Ambrose has signed on to the new HBO series Six Feet Under, playing Claire, the youngest sibling in a family running a funeral home. The pilot episode alone shows Ambrose's Claire smoking meth, driving while high, freaking out in a grocery store, and freely grieving her father's death. In a single role, Ambrose has already proven her willingness to take risks, and talent enough to hold her own against seasoned character actors like Frances Conroy and Richard Jenkins. And so far, her chipmunk cheeks are beside the point.

Birch, only nineteen, has been working as an actor since age six, making a fairly graceful transition from precocious toddler (in Day by Day) to tween tease (in Hocus Pocus) to sullen teen (in American Beauty) to deadpan young adult (in the upcoming Ghost World). Like many child stars who've grown up into adult stars, Birch turns in solidly professional if not always especially memorable work; this commentator hasn't seen more than half the movies on her CV but none of them has a reputation as an extraordinary flop. And we have to give her credit for reaching the age of nineteen without showing up in a single teen panty farce or crappy Bring It On rip-off.

One might argue that Ambrose is basically Alan Ball's small-screen Thora Birch. Ball, the writer and director of Six Feet Under, also wrote American Beauty, which starred Birch as the antisocial Jane. Naturally, it would have broken Ball's budget to get Birch for eight or thirteen weeks of a TV series, so is Ambrose just Birch's Mexican non-union equivalent? We like Six Feet Under and all, but...yes.

Advantage: Birch