10 More Actors Who Gave Their Best Performances In Movies Nobody Saw
1. Elisabeth Moss - Shirley
Elisabeth Moss has near-countless brilliant performances to her name - on the TV front there's Mad Men, Top of the Lake, and The Handmaid's Tale, while on the big screen there's Girl, Interrupted, The One I Love, Queen of Earth, Her Smell, Us, and The Invisible Man.
But the best of the lot? Moss' performance as eccentric novelist Shirley Jackson in Josephine Decker's hypnotic 2020 biopic Shirley.
Focused on Jackson while she was writing her 1951 novel Hangsaman, this may only be a mere snapshot of her life, but Moss provides such a tenacious window into the woman as both mentally ill and creative genius, that we come to feel like we truly know her essence by film's end.
More than any other film Moss has made, this gives her the freedom to swing and swing hard, untethered by the expected bounds of a formal biopic, director Decker taking a step back and opting for a more surreal, dreamlike filmmaking style.
Though Shirley was widely lauded at film festivals and in critical circles, it grossed just $305,805 worldwide on limited release, after which it was quietly sent to streaming.
At least unlike Diesel Moss seems quite content working on these smaller, less-restrictive indie projects, even if it'll take some serious doing to top her work in this film.