Once Mischa Barton became of age and got her role in The O.C, she was all the rage. To us, however, Mischa has been all the rage ever since we saw her first feature film Lawn Dogs, which to this day is also her best role by a large margin. No amount of hype for that movie is enough; there's a reason we scored it at 5 stars. Mischa's next movie, two years later, was the mediocre B-movie Pups.

The same year Mischa had a small part in the widely distributed movie Notting Hill. While under a minute in duration, the little scene is fun and shows Mischa in a manner not quite seen elsewhere. Worth taking a look at. Not a bad romantic comedy overall, either.

The Sixth Sense is the film Mischa was the best known about until The O.C. Why, I'm not sure. Mischa plays a child ghost who barfs on herself. Some role to have, that one. But Mischa is a good fit for the job: painted pale and ghostly, she's very eerie and otherworldly.

Paranoid, where Mischa is 13, is one of those waste-of-time movies in which all actors end up now and then. Even Dakota Fanning had one.

However, the next one, called Skipped Parts and released the same year, is much better. It also features another one of my favorite actresses, Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is perfect in her role as the immature though kind and well-meaning mother.

Frankie & Hazel is a pretty boring movie with a Disney-like glossy feeling. Mischa's character is a meek girl trying to choose between ballet and Baseball.

By Lost and Delirious, Mischa has grown into a teenager. I and Alex both love this movie. Pauline and Victoria, sixteen-year-old girls, are best friends in a boarding school, share a room, and are in love with each other. Mischa's character, Mary 'Mouse' Bradford, arrives at the school and is assigned to the same room. Loving parents don't put their children into a boarding school, at least not in case of these three. Mary has just lost her mother, Victoria's are emotionally distant, and Pauline never knew her real mother. But all seems well, the girls having fun together, until Victoria's younger sister Allison (Emily VanCamp, also on the cast of Everwood, who makes a good annoying brat of a little sister) finds out about the love affair, and Victoria must choose between staying with Pauline or abandoning her to avoid disgrace from her family.

Mischa's character is very likeable, but it is Piper Perabo as Pauline who steals every scene she's in. The music of the introductory scene, narrated by Mischa, has some magically captivating quality that works tremendously well on both of us, and the rest of the movie lives up to the high standards the beginning sets.

Of Mischa's later movies we have seen Tart, A Ring of Endless Light, Octane and the television series The O.C, but none of those are match to Mischa's earlier movies, and outside of the scope of this site anyway.