It’s possible that you’re only now becoming aware of the talent ofAndrea Riseborough, the Newcastle-born actress involved in a controversy this year over her surprise nomination for a Best Actress Academy Award for her role in the indie filmTo Leslie. The chameleon-like Riseborough has often gone under the radar, appearing largely in smaller films, but those in the know will tell you that despite thesomewhat questionable nature of the campaignto get her nominated, her talent speaks for itself, and the nomination was absolutely deserved.
The RADA-educated Riseborough made her film debut with a tiny role in 2006’sVenus, which starred Peter O’Toole and Jodie Whittaker, and hasn’t stopped working since, collaborating with luminary directors such as Mike Leigh, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Armando Iannucci, and even Madonna. So if you don’t have Riseborough on your radar yet (or even if you do), here’s a list of her ten best to get you started.
Related:Why Andrea Riseborough is Well-Deserving of Her Oscar Nomination
10W.E. (2011)
Madonna got a lot of flack for her historical drama, which is partly a biopic of the infamous Wallis Simpson, the controversial lover and then wife of King Edward VIII, who had to abdicate his throne to marry the twice-divorced American. It was always going to be a controversial film, but the general consensus from critics was that Madonna was not up to the task, focusing too much on the aesthetics and fashion and not enough on the substance of the story. There was also criticism of the plot which imitated that ofJulie and Julia, having the historical part of the film framed with a woman who didn’t actually know the main character. But Riseborough as Simpson received great reviews, portraying perhaps one of the most fascinating women of the past century, an icy, brittle woman who still divides opinion.
9Shadow Dancer (2012)
Riseborough’s uncanny ability to transform herself was well-served in this 2012 spy drama in which she plays Colette, a Northern Irish woman in the ’90s who, after her possible involvement in a failed bomb attack, is forced to choose between decades in prison or conscription into MI5, where she will be required to spy on her own family. For the sake of her young son, Colette chooses MI5, where her handler is an agent named Mac (Clive Owen), and their professional relationship soon develops into something romantic. It’s a grim, tense film about loyalties, whether these be to family, country, lovers, or some other cause, and Riseborough shines as a woman torn between a number of loyalties that cannot coexist.
Related:Best Spy Movies of All Time (That Aren’t James Bond), Ranked
8Please Baby Please (2022)
Released in 2022, director Amanda Kramer’s hard-to-classify musicalPlease Baby Pleaseis a strange, 1950s-set tale of an arty New York couple, Arthur and Suze (Harry Melling and Riseborough), whose lives are turned upside down after witnessing a brutal attack by a violent gang called The Young Gents (who also do an awful lot of dancing for a gang). The experience leads the couple into a newfound exploration of sexuality and gender fluidity that reads like a dark Patricia Highsmith/John Waters mash-up. It’s a glaring, gaudy spectacle of sex and violence and Marlon Brando references, and Riseborough’s Suze embraces this new world with an animal vigor, increasingly in danger of losing herself entirely.
7Birdman (2014)
Michael Keaton made a big return to the spotlight in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s dark comedy of 2014, as Riggan, a one-time movie superhero trying to put on a Broadway production of Raymond Carver’sWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Love, while being haunted by the critical voice of the superhero he portrayed, Birdman. Riseborough plays Laura, Riggan’s girlfriend, who will be starring in the play. It’s a bit of a thankless character, what with Riggan being a slave to his ego, the voice of Birdman, and turning to basically everyone else before relying on the supportive girlfriend who stuck with him before the play looked like it was going to be a success. It’s an ensemble cast that includes Naomi Watts, Emma Stone, Edward Norton, and Zach Galifianakis, but Riseborough held her own against all these established actors.
6Welcome to the Punch (2013)
The script for 2013’s British action thriller famously came from the Brit List, which is an annual list of the best as-yet unproduced screenplays voted on by the film industry. Riseborough is detective Sarah Hawks, partnered up with James MacAvoy as Max Lewinsky, a detective injured a few years previously during a robbery. The two are trying to untangle a conspiracy involving the criminal who shot Lewinsky, Jacob Sternwood (Mark Strong), but it soon becomes apparent that the conspiracy stretches deeper, further, and closer to the detectives than they’d previously thought. It’s a gritty, male-centric film with a cast rounded out by the likes of David Morrissey,Peter Mullan, and Daniel Kaluuya, but Riseborough is still able to establish herself as a formidable presence in the midst of all that testosterone.
5Brighton Rock (2010)
Rowan Joffé’s 2010 adaptation of Graham Greene’s famous 1938 novel (as opposed to the 1948 film version starring Richard Attenborough), stripped away some of the religious themes of Greene’s novel, making for a more straightforward film noir. Set in a grim, gray 1960s Brighton, it’s the story of Pinkie (Sam Riley), a fledgling gangster with a terrifying penchant for violence and cruelty. Riseborough is heart-rending as Rose, a mousy waitress who falls for the few charms that Pinkie has, even though he is only interested in her because he’s worried she could rat on him for murder, and so he marries her to keep her quiet. A review inThe Guardiannoted prophetically, “To say her achievement deserves an Oscar would be somehow to demean it… Her portrayal of Rose grips the heart from the beginning and does not let go until the final frame.” For a movie that is ostensibly about Pinkie, it is Riseborough’s bravura performance as Rose that you will remember.
4Mandy (2018)
Even for a notorious scenery-chewer like Nicolas Cage, he overdid things in Panos Cosmatos’psychedelic action horror film of 2018. He’s Red Miller, a logger and recovering alcoholic living a quiet bucolic life in the middle of the forest with his girlfriend Mandy (Riseborough), that is, until she is tortured and graphically killed by a religious cult. Even with all of Miller’s yelling and screaming and pouring liquor all over himself in his underpants, and an equally bananas performance from the cult leader played by Linus Roache, Riseborough is a standout as Mandy, a waifish goth in death metal tee shirts who does intricate fantasy illustrations and loves to talk about the planets when she’s not at her gas station job. She’s a strange, gentle little 1980s pixie with bleached eyebrows, and it’s understandable that Miller spends the whole film wreaking bloody revenge on her killers.
3The Death of Stalin (2017)
Once again one of the lone females in a male-centric film, Riseborough played Svetlana Stalin in Armando Iannucci’s hilarious 2017 political satire, against an impressive cast that included Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, and Michael Palin as Russian government officials scrabbling to pick up the pieces and take as much as they can for themselves after Stalin’s unexpected death threatens to leave a power vacuum. Riseborough’s Svetlana is frumpy and frazzled, struggling to hold onto her father’s legacy and what should be rightfully bequeathed to her, ever-conscious that as a woman, she is going to have to be ruthless to get it amongst a group of men accustomed to the viciousness of her father’s regime.
2Possessor (2020)
Brandon Cronenberg proved himself very definitely his father’s son with his second film, a science fiction body horror starring Riseborough and Christopher Abbott. At work, Tasya Vos (Riseborough) is an assassin who works by inserting herself into the consciousness of her victims, getting them to commit suicide. As it might, Vos’ work has caused some issues in her home life, and she has trouble merely being herself around her husband and child, plagued with detachment and flashes of the violence she’s accustomed to at work. In the act of carrying out a high-profile hit, Vos gets trapped inside of Colin Tate (Abbott), who was meant to kill his fiancée and her father before killing himself.
Things get even more complicated when Tate becomes aware that Vos is inside of him. Riseboroughdescribed her character thus: “She’s become so desensitized that she can only really feel through annihilation. She can only feel through destruction.” Inevitably, the decision as to whether she can continue with such a duplicitous life will not be her own.
1To Leslie (2022)
Michael Morris scored big when he landed Riseborough as the titular character in his 2022 debut film, a story about a single mother who wins the lottery, only to blow it all on liquor, drugs, and various other bad habits. Bankrupt just a few years later, she constantly makes promises to family and friends, only to break them again and again. Sleeping outside a motel one night,the proprietor (Marc Maron)ends up taking pity on her and offers her a cleaning job, but can she stay sober long enough to turn her life around and mend all the bridges she’s burned? Riseborough’s performance is career-defining, providing a nuanced look at a woman that everyone is embarrassed by, that everyone has written off, someone you don’t even want to root for because she’s squandered every chance, and manages to wring that last little bit of poignancy out.
