Fans of the classic Disney Halloween movie Hocus Pocus will no doubt 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 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 ing roles in indie dramas and thrillers such as Affairs of State (2018), Kindred Spirits (2019), and 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 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.
