Mia Kirshner: The New Face of Bisexuals on TV?
Sarah Warn, October 2002
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For most people, the name "Mia Kirshner" doesn't ring a bell. But in the last two years, Kirshner has played more bisexual characters on film and television than just about any other Hollywood actress.
The Canadian actress first broke into Hollywood through a part in 1993's Love and Human Remains, in a memorable turn as a dominatrix. Kirshner's real breakout role, however, came at seventeen as the star of 1994's Exotica--the first of her bisexual roles--as teen stripper Christina. Smaller parts in larger movies began to beckon shortly thereafter, including The Crow: City of Angels, Anna Karenina, and Murder in the First with Christian Slater and Kevin Bacon.
Along the way, however, Kirshner majored in Russian Literature at McGill University - and by the late 90's began her professional major in dysfunctional, oversexed characters by taking on a series of "bad girl" roles in movies that flopped or were barely noticed (like Dark Summer, Saturn, and Century Hotel).
In most of these films, her characters were overly sexual teenagers who could politely be called "opportunistic." Since that is pretty much the definition of bisexuality in Hollywood, it was inevitable that Kirshner would end up playing bisexual roles.
The first of Kirshner's bisexual roles was in 2001's gross-out, satirical comedy Not Another Teen Movie, in which Kirshner's virgin-whore Catholic school girl character attempts to seduce both her brother and an elderly woman (in a spoof on Sarah Michelle Gellar's character in Cruel Intentions.)
Then in 2002's critically reviled teen thriller New Best Friend, Kirshner starred as Alicia, an evil bisexual girl who uses sex to manipulate everyone around her - including Dominique Swain's bisexual character. In true Hollywood fashion, Kirshner's character does not come to a very good end.
Finally, in the 2001-2002 television season, Kirshner appeared in the first season of the Fox television series 24 as secret assassin Mandy, who is yet another manipulative bisexual woman (but at least this time she's not a teenager).
Although she has also played several heterosexual characters, as well, Kirshner obviously has the manipulative-bisexual role down to a science - and if she just continued along this vein she would not garner much praise from lesbian and bisexual viewers.