Parker Posey’s Best Movies, Ranked | Pretty Reel

Actress Parker Posey has appeared in some classic movies, from Best in Show to Personal Velocity. That suits an actress who, after a short stint on soap opera As The World Turns, made her film debut in Coneheads, followed quickly by her breakout role in Richard Linklater’s 90s cult classic Dazed and Confused. She spent less than a year working on the soap before landing her breakout role, and Posey hasn’t slowed down since. Queen of independent films, Posey has also made memorable appearances in bigger films like You’ve Got Mail and Blade: Trinity.

She was born (along with her twin brother Christopher) in Baltimore, Maryland in 1968. Parker’s family moved to Monroe, Louisiana, and later Laurel, Mississippi for her mother’s career as a chef and her father’s career. working for car dealerships. She studied acting at the State University of New York at Purchase and booked her first role (on As The World Turns) shortly after graduation. She has worked steadily since and is a frequent collaborator with director Christopher Guest and has appeared in five of his major mockumentary films: Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003), For Your Consideration (2006) and Mascots (2016).

Although Posey hasn’t achieved A-list fame in more than three decades of professional acting, she has achieved something much more elusive and important: a solid, stable and enduring career as a film actress. and television, and one of the most iconic and hippest faces of Gen X. One of the most underrated actors of the past three decades, let’s take a look at Parker Posey’s best performances.

7 Price Verification

IFC Films

Price Check is a 2012 film starring Eric Mabius as Pete Cozy. Pete is going through a tough time in life. His debt is high, he hates his job and all of this is affecting his marriage and family life. Parker Posey plays Pete’s new boss, Susan, a human energizer bunny, who drags Pete into the chaos of his life and work style, forcing him to work harder than ever. Posey is a force of nature here, playing against type a bit but playing the role to the hilt.

6 Mad Henry

Sony Pictures Classics

Henry Fool (1998) is the first film in a trilogy that also includes 2006’s Fay Grim and 2014’s Ned Rifle starring Aubrey Plaza. Henry Fool (an incredible Thomas Jay Ryan) is a novelist who has just been released from a seven-year prison term for attempted statutory rape. He befriends the socially awkward Simon Grim, a garbage collector who takes inspiration from Fool to write a poem that ends up winning the Nobel Prize. Parker Posey plays Simon’s sister, Fay Grim, whom he seduces and impregnates. As Simon’s star rises, Henry plunges into a life of dive bar drinking. This unclassifiable film from Hal Hartley is a funny, weird and brilliant indie that paved the way for a surprisingly suspenseful trilogy.

5 Fay Grim

Magnolia Pictures

Fay Grim is set seven years after the events of Henry Fool. Parker Posey reprises his role as the title character, who is coerced by a CIA agent (Jeff Goldblum) into trying to find mysterious notebooks her fugitive husband Henry Fool supposedly possesses. Believing her husband to be dead, Fay is thrust into a world of espionage as she travels to Paris in an attempt to recover part of the diary. The diaries have all, at one time or another, landed in the hands of his brother Simon and Henry. As the mystery deepens, Fay is informed of what the journals contain, raising the stakes and putting her life in danger. A surprisingly cool and downright awesome movie, Fay Grim is a stylistic, thrilling, and mysterious film that positions Posey as a badass female lead that she doesn’t often get the chance to play.

4 Best in Show

Pictures from Warner Bros.

Best in Show is a 2000 mockumentary from the mind of Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy that chronicles the characters surrounding an exclusive dog show similar to the real-life Westminster Dog Show. Parker Posey played Meg Snow, who, along with her husband Hamilton, is a stereotypical suburban Chicago yuppie. Their Weimaraner, Béatrice, is entered in the competition. Poor Beatrice’s behavior is severely affected by the Swans’ neurotic behavior. When Beatrice’s favorite toy goes missing, they frantically search for a replacement before the show begins. While the entire cast (Catherine O’Hara, Michael McKean, Fred Willard, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch, Ed Begley Jr. and more) is incredible, Poset hilariously steals every scene she’s in.

3 Waiting For Guffman

Sony Pictures Classics

Christopher Guest and the great Eugene Levy also wrote the 1996 mockumentary Waiting for Guffman in which Parker Posey plays Libby Mae Brown. The film chronicles the making of a community theater production in the fictional town of Blaine, Missouri. The production, Red, White and Blaine, is to commemorate the town’s 150th anniversary. Posey’s character is a delightfully bored employee of the local Dairy Queen who is thrown into the room alongside other townspeople. As usual, she’s incredibly naturalistic and organic in her work with Guest, and her combination of improvisation and character work is both very funny and emotionally intuitive.

2 Dazed and Confused

Pictures of Gramercy

Parker Posey had his breakout role in Richard Linklater’s 1993 film (which also introduced the world to Ben Affleck, Renee Zelwegger, Adam Goldberg and Milla Jovovich), Dazed and Confused. She played a senior cheerleader named Darla who takes great joy in hazing freshman girls. When she sadly shouts “Air Raid,” the girls smash the floor, lying on their stomachs, while Poser giggles happily in a delightfully wicked performance. Posey improvised parts of his memorable performance in the film on The Last Day of High School in 1976, which also launched Matthew McConaughey’s career. Alright, alright, alright.

1 party girl

First Look Photos

Party Girl featured Parker Posey as Mary, a free spirit who sleeps all day and parties all night. The 1995 film is notable for being the first film to premiere on the internet. Mary is arrested for hosting an underground rave and calls her godmother to bail her out. Mary goes to work for her godmother at the library to pay off her debt. She’s inspired to learn the Dewey Decimal System after being totally burned out on the job, and the movie’s weird, aimless fun builds from there. Party Girl is so entertaining it can make viewers nostalgic for the utter chaos of being in your twenties, and Posey is just iconic in it.