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With strawberry blonde hair and an innocent smile, actress Agnes Bruckner has a strangely familiar face that seems to make her more sympathetic and identifiable than most of her onscreen contemporaries. Her stunning breakout performance as a troubled young girl who seeks escape from her downbeat life through poetry in Karen Moncrieff's Blue Car earned Bruckner an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead, pointing to a bright future for the magnetic and unusually assured young actress. Born to a Russian father and Hungarian mother in Hollywood, CA, the bilingual aspiring actress found her first role in the little-seen short film Girl (1997). That same year, the then-12-year-old Bruckner landed a role on the popular daytime soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful, and the following year, she took her first lead as a young girl who dedicates herself to saving the residents of a miniature city found beneath a construction site in The Shrunken City. As Hollywood came calling, Bruckner played a supporting role in the thriller The Glass House in 2001, though her true breakthrough wouldn't come until the release of Blue Car the following year. 2002 proved a productive and exciting year for the ascending young star, with roles in the Columbine-inspired teen drama Home Room and Barbet Schroeder's Murder by Numbers making her an increasingly familiar face to moviegoers. A role in the harrowing drama Rick (2003) found Bruckner the target of an Internet predator who just happened to be her father's sleazy boss, and in 2004, following supporting roles in Stateside and May director Lucky McKee's girl-school chiller The Woods, Bruckner could be seen in the high-profile Hollywood adventure Haven.