Vera Farmiga is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles in the 2006 films Running Scared and The Departed. She is currently starring in the 2008 holocaust film The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

The second oldest of seven children, she was born in Essex County, New Jersey and grew up in Irvington, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants Mykhailo, a computer-systems analyst, and Luba Farmiga, a schoolteacher. Farmiga was raised in an insular Ukrainian American community, not speaking English until the age of six. She attended a Ukrainian Catholic school in Newark and toured with a Ukrainian folk-dancing ensemble. In 1991, Farmiga graduated from Hunterdon Central Regional High School.

Although she originally intended to become an optometrist, Farmiga attended Syracuse University's School of Visual and Performing Arts. She made her Broadway debut in 1996 as an understudy in the play Taking Sides. The same year, she starred as Miranda in the American Conservatory Theater production of The Tempest. Following her theater debut, she played a role in the television series, Roar, which was filmed in Australia, alongside Heath Ledger Farmiga said that the series "wanted to be Braveheart but turned out more Xena: Warrior Princess." Throughout the late 1990s, she continued appearing in stage, television and film roles, including a part in the 1998 film Return to Paradise.

Farmiga appeared in several high profile films in the early 2000s, including Autumn in New York, 15 Minutes and the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate. Her lead performance in the 2005 film Down to the Bone received a "Best Actress" award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. In 2006, she appeared in Running Scared.

Rather than attending auditions for films in which she interested, Farmiga makes short films which she submits for casting. She uses her computer to edit film in a very clever way. "To fade in and fade out, have intimacy with the mikes, the lighting, and have the luxury of takes - you could make yourself as ugly or as beautiful as you wanted". The films have always resulted in a meeting.

It was one of these audition films that led to Scorsese inviting her for what she calls 'a chemistry read' with Leonardo DiCaprio, which led to her role as a police psychiatrist in The Departed.