Dianne Wiest’s 20 best film performances – ranked

Dianne Wiest’s film work ranges from baffling curiosities to quietly devastating turns, collected here across 20 roles. The list moves through early supporting parts, comic heights and more somber, quietly rendered performances without losing sight of her knack for finding nuance.

Some entries are oddities, like Merci Docteur Rey, in which she flails through a bananas plot in Paris, and early best-pal parts in It’s My Turn and Falling in Love, where she supplies warmth and antennae-twitching insight as the confidante who prompts confessions.

Her comic gifts and theatrical instincts land hardest in films such as Bullets Over Broadway, where she won an Oscar for her sozzled drama queen Helen Sinclair — “My taste is superb. My eyes are exquisite” — and in The Birdcage and Parenthood, where she balances dignity and exasperation.

France, Paris

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