Her mother taught dance, which O'Toole herself began learning at the age of three. Her first major film role was as a jaded beauty pageant contestant in the satire Smile ; she got the role after doing an impression of a "dead cockroach" at the audition.
Also in , she had a starring role as Ms. Edmunds in the original Bridge to Terabithia , and appeared in the TV adaptation of Strong Medicine the following year. She played the adult Beverly Marsh in the television mini-series adaptation of Stephen King 's epic horror novel It. She remained part of the show's main cast, though at times in the background, [ 13 ] until the end of its sixth season.
She made guest apperances in the final two seasons, reprising her role, while also portraying The Red Queen.
In , O'Toole played the role of Veronica, a middle-aged woman with a severe case of Alzheimer's, in the television series Lie to Me. She still currently plays the role, with season six being released in December O'Toole can date the beginning of her songwriting career to events during a car ride after the September 11 attacks ; as her husband Michael McKean describes it, "On September 11, , Annette found herself without an airline to carry her back down to Los Angeles from Vancouver, where she films Smallville.
So she drove a rental car down. The two of us drove it back up together, and on the long drive up there, somewhere between Portland and Seattle, she told me she had a tune in her head.
