Fans of the classic Disney Halloween movie Hocus Pocus will no doubt remember Max Dennison’s adorable and endearing, if not slightly annoying, little sister Dani - but who was the actor behind the character, and what has she been up to since? Hocus Pocus debuted in 1993 and will soon receive a long-awaited sequel movie set to release in 2022. What many viewers might not know is that the adorable 11-year-old actor who played Dani, Thora Birch, has been in quite a few other feature films since the mid-nineties and is still working in the industry today.
Thora Birch, born in 1982, got her start in the acting business at a very young age, auditioning for television commercials as early as the age of 4. Her first major role in Purple People Eater, alongside Neil Patrick Harris, won her a Young Artists Award in 1988. From there, she continued to land roles in the early to mid-nineties, such as the role of Harrison Ford’s daughter in Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), a younger version of Melanie Griffith in Now and Then (1995), and of course Dani Dennison in Disney’s Hocus Pocus.
In her teenage years, Thora Birch took on the role of Jane Burnham, daughter of Kevin Spacey and Annette Benning’s characters in American Beauty (1999). This role opened her career to more opportunities, allowing her to claim more diverse roles in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. After starring in films of varying popularity such as The Hole (2001) and the live-action movie Dungeons and Dragons (2000), Birch spent much of the mid-2000s making appearances in TV shows, television movies, and even lending her voice to a cartoon character briefly in My Life as a Teenage Robot. Thora Birch’s filmography slowed a bit in the last fifteen years, though it has begun to pick up again as her appearances increased in 2018.
In recent years, Thora Birch has appeared in a wide range of films, mostly supporting roles in indie dramas and thrillers such as Affairs of State (2018), Kindred Spirits (2019), and Above Suspicion (2021). Perhaps her most notable recent appearance was as Mary (formerly known as Gamma) in AMC’s The Walking Dead. She is also set to appear in the late October 2021 release of 13 Minutes, an action thriller also starring Amy Smart and Anne Heche about a group of Heartlanders who must survive a tornado disaster. She is also confirmed for a role in the upcoming Netflix original show Wednesday, which centers on Wednesday Addams of the Addams Family.
Though it is not yet confirmed whether Thora Birch will reprise her role as Dani for Hocus Pocus 2, she did tweet a hint of her involvement in the project in May of 2021. Perhaps she was simply expressing excitement (as many others certainly did) at the prospect of a sequel for the cult classic Hocus Pocus but there’s no doubt that audiences would love to see Thora Birch back as an adult Dani, even if it’s just for a cameo.