Vera Farmiga's career "up in the air?" Not anymore

A few years ago you might not have recognized her name. She starred alongside heavyweights Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson in Martin Scorcese's The Departed, and got major buzz for her award-winning turn as a drug-addicted mother and wife in Down to the Bone, directed by Winter's Bone scribe Debra Granik.

But it now seems that Vera Farmiga is a name you won't ever forget. As Deadline first reported, the Oscar-nominated actress has just joined the Universal Pictures’ thriller Safe House.

Farmiga will be joining Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds in the Daniel Espinosa-directed drama. In the film, Reynolds plays young CIA operative assigned to escorting a dangerous criminal (Washington) to safety after their safe house is attacked. Farmiga “will play a CIA operative supervising Reynolds' character.” The film, which is already in production, is set to be released on February 10, 2012.

I have always been extremely interested in Farmiga's film choices, and this upcoming role in Safe House seems like a nice transition for her. Every actress has to have that somewhat thankless role as the beaut in an action film at some point in her career. See Sandra Bullock, Natalie Portman, Penelope Cruz, Charlize Theron, Anne Hathaway, and the list goes on.

I thought Farmiga was great in Departed, if not spectacular, and it definitely brought her career to the next level. Personally though, I will always remember Farmiga for her turn in 15 Minutes, a 2001 thriller starring Ed Burns and Robert DeNiro, in which is witness to an arson attack they are investigating. I recognized her beauty right from the get-go, and hoped she would have a bright future in the business.

Though it was really her Oscar-nominated role as a sexy business executive in Up in the Air, opposite George Clooney, that brought her to the level she is at now. She was able to play beautiful and damged so seemlessly well, that in the end you felt for a character that we weren't supposed to feel for.

And now Farmiga is currently co-starring in the extremely-well reviewed “Source Code, opposite Jake Gylenhaall, and had her directorial debut, Higher Ground, debut at Sundance earlier in the year.

With the news of her role in Safe House, plus a reported role in an adaptation of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, I'm excited for what she has coming up in the future. Plus, I will always have a "guilty pleasure" spot in my "film loving heart" for Orphan, whose ending I don't think anyone saw coming.