Daveigh Chase - Acting Career

Acting Career

Chase's big break came in 2002 when she won the lead role as the voice of a Hawaiian girl, Lilo Pelekai, in the Disney animated feature, Lilo & Stitch. The film relates how Lilo befriends a strange and destructive blue alien thinly disguised as a dog, whom she calls "Stitch", and how she tries to teach him how to behave using Elvis Presley music as exemplars. For her performance, Chase would go on to win an Annie Award in 2003 and star in the follow-up TV series, Lilo & Stitch: The Series. Chase also voiced the role of the lead character, Chihiro Ogino, a 10 year old Japanese girl, in the American dub of the animated Japanese feature, Spirited Away.

In 2002, Chase starred in the role of Samara Morgan in the feature film, The Ring. Chase was awarded the 2003 Best Villain award at the MTV Movie Awards for her performance, beating out Mike Myers, Colin Farrell, Willem Dafoe and Daniel Day-Lewis. In the sequel to The Ring, The Ring Two (2005), Chase was credited for her role as Samara Morgan because of the use of archive footage from the first Ring, but Kelly Stables performed all of the new footage.

Chase's main other major film and TV credits between 2000 and 2005 were the cult film Donnie Darko (2001) as Donnie's younger sister, Samantha, and Oliver Beene (2003–2004), as Oliver's quirky girlfriend Joyce. Other credits include The Rats (2002), Carolina (2003), R.L. Stine's Haunted Lighthouse (2003) in which she played a flying ghost called Annabel, and Beethoven's 5th (2003). She also made guest appearances in Touched by an Angel, Charmed, ER, Family Law, and The Practice.

In 2006, Chase was given the role of Rhonda Volmer in the HBO drama series Big Love which centers on a polygamist family and its patriarch, Bill Henrickson, played by Bill Paxton. The show focuses upon Henrickson's relationship with his three wives. Chase's character is the child bride of a prophet, Roman Grant, played by Harry Dean Stanton.

Leroy & Stitch, a follow-up to Lilo & Stitch, was released in 2006. Chase then appeared in the second season of Big Love, which aired in 2007. She also plays Betsy in the new PBS Kids show called Betsy's Kindergarten Adventures the same year. She reprised her role as Donnie Darko's younger sister, Samantha, in the film S. Darko.* The story picks up seven years after the first film when Samantha Darko and her best friend Corey are now 18 and on a road trip to Los Angeles when they are plagued by bizarre visions.

In 2010, Daveigh starred as Jenna in the psychological thriller Prettyface. In addition, Daveigh has been cast as Audrey in the remake of the movie Jack's Back which will start filming in August.