Frances McDormand’s 10 Best Roles, From Fargo to Nomadland

On paper and in almost every other conceivable way, Frances McDormand is a movie star. Long considered one of our greatest living performers, she’s nabbed six Oscar nominations and two wins across her four-decade career. She’s married to filmmaking royalty (Joel Coen of the Coen brothers), considers actors like Holly Hunter among her closest friends, and always looks like she’s having more fun than anybody else on a red carpet.

And yet the last word McDormand would probably use to describe herself is celebrity, once telling a journalist that unless she’s performing for an audience onstage, “I don’t want to be the event in someone’s day.” Fame may not have been her goal, but the 63-year old has never been in higher demand.

A current best-actress contender for her turn in the intimate Chloé Zhao drama Nomadland, McDormand’s specialty has always been her relatability. Even when her characters are outlandish (Raising Arizona), despicable (Burn After Reading), or downright goofy (Fargo), she grounds every performance with an innate truthfulness. McDormand makes you believe every person she plays is a flesh-and-blood human who continues living out their life once the cameras stop rolling.

Ahead of this Sunday’s Oscars ceremony, Vogue took a deep dive into McDormand’s filmography to dissect her most memorable performances. 

Blood Simple (1984)

The role of a cheating spouse in the Coen brothers’ directorial debut was originally offered to Holly Hunter, McDormand’s classmate at the Yale School of Drama. Unable to accept due to a scheduling conflict, Hunter urged McDormand to audition for the film, a neo-noir about a jealous saloon owner who hires a hit man to take out his wife and her lover. After an impressive first audition, the directors were convinced they’d found their leading lady when McDormand declined to appear for a callback, explaining that she had to watch her boyfriend’s two-line debut in a soap opera at the time they requested.

“Nobody ever says something like that when you’re starting to offer them a job,” Joel Coen said. “We really liked that. It was so guileless—just what we wanted for Abby.”

Blood Simple would mark McDormand’s film debut and her first of many collaborations with future husband Joel Coen. The two became close while filming in Austin after McDormand asked her director for some book recommendations. Coen gifted her a set of classic potboilers by authors like Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, including the libidinous The Postman Always Rings Twice.

“I read it, and it was one of the sexiest fuckin’ books I’ve ever read,” McDormand later said. “A couple of nights later, I said, ‘Would you like to come over and discuss the book?’ That did it. He seduced me with literature.”

How to watch: Stream on HBO Max.

Mississippi Burning (1988)

Loosely based on the murders of several civil rights activists during the Freedom Summer campaigns of 1964, Mississippi Burning chronicles the subsequent FBI investigation. With local authorities tainted by corruption and the community at large unwilling to cooperate, the crime drama follows two agents—Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe—tasked with bringing down the Ku Klux Klan members responsible.

The film’s intentions were admirable enough to earn seven Oscar nominations in 1988, even if its centralization of the white characters—among other white-savior tropes—don’t read quite as generously in 2021. McDormand scored her first nomination playing Mrs. Pell, a hairdresser married to the abusive town sheriff who eventually becomes a valuable ally to the FBI agents. The role is an early testament to McDormand’s ability to draw humanity out of even the most thinly written supporting characters.

How to watch: Stream on Amazon with Cinemax.

Darkman (1990)

Years before Sam Raimi ushered in a new era for franchise filmmaking with his Spider-Man trilogy, the director created his own superhero. Part comic-book action romp, part gruesome horror show, Darkman follows the mild-mannered Peyton Westlake, a skin scientist played by Liam Neeson, who gets left for dead when a group of gangsters destroys his lab. After surviving the incident with bad burns and newfound super strength, he reemerges as a masked vigilante seeking revenge.

McDormand is excellent as Westlake’s distraught former lover, a high-powered lawyer that Raimi wrote after receiving criticism for the treatment of women in his Evil Dead films. The role is a fairly standard “damsel-in-distress” archetype, but McDormand infuses her with a grit that’s present even when she’s tossed from one perilous situation to another. “I was trained to be a theater actress. So it was an adjustment for me to figure out my purpose inside Sam’s technical world of making a movie,” McDormand later said of making Darkman. “There were times when he thought we could be steamrolled and then pop right back up, like a cartoon character. I chafed against that a lot, but I learned a lot, too.”

How to watch: Stream on Amazon.

Fargo (1996)

McDormand won her first Oscar playing the heavily pregnant police chief in Fargo, the Coen brothers’ pitch-black comedy about a kidnapping plot that spirals out of control. In a film overflowing with violent criminals, oafish goons, and manipulative businessmen, Marge Gunderson is a beacon of moral authority. Speaking with a Minnesota accent that morphs every “yeah” into a “yah,” she remains one of McDormand’s most inspired creations.

“I looked like a huge turd out there in the snow, waddling around,” she joked of her character’s wardrobe. McDormand sported prosthetic breasts and a faux pregnant belly packed with birdseed to help her physically ease into the role of Marge, modeling her take on the character after her sister, a chaplain at a maximum-security prison. “Joel said, ‘You know, the character does not have to be as unattractive as you’re making her.’ But I love the way I look as Marge.”

How to watch: Stream on Amazon.

Almost Famous (2000)

Cameron Crowe’s joyous tribute to his youth only gets better with age. Almost Famous follows a 15-year old music journalist who lands an assignment to interview a rising rock band for Rolling Stone. As the boy’s terminally uncool mother, McDormand’s Elaine is strong-willed and loving to a fault. She’s the type of mom who’ll let her son chase his rock dreams across the country—but will also leave a message for him with the hotel clerk (“Don’t take drugs!”).

McDormand once noted in an interview that she had mostly avoided playing moms before Almost Famous. She had already mothered a child in her real life and had no interest exploring a role she knew so thoroughly. “There aren’t a lot of complicated, well-rounded, three-dimensional mother parts out there,” she said. “Elaine is not some raving lunatic. She’s a really fascinating woman. And it’s not often that I get to meet the director’s mother.”

Crowe’s mother was allowed on set with the stipulation that she not bother McDormand or try to inform her performance in any way. And yet within 10 minutes of Alice Crowe’s arrival, she approached the actor playing a fictionalized version of herself and said, “I find the character a little shrill. I hope you don’t intend to play her that way.”

“I turned around, and she’s buttonholing Frances right in front of me” the director said. “[Frances] said, ‘Alice, it’s not gonna be you, and it’s not gonna be me. It’s gonna be someone else.’”

How to watch: Stream on Amazon.

Laurel Canyon (2003)

Featuring one of her most lived-in performances, Laurel Canyon stars McDormand as Jane, a free-spirited record producer whose greatest pleasures are smoking weed and skinny-dipping. Described by the actor as someone who “definitely lives through her crotch—in a great way,” Jane and her complicated relationship with her son (Christian Bale) and his girlfriend (Kate Beckinsale) are at the center of the film.

Under-seen at the time of release and rarely discussed in the years since, the film holds up as an acting showcase for the talented trio of leads. Despite appearing like a relic of the titular neighborhood’s hippie-dippie peak, McDormand doesn’t play Jane as some tragic bohemian stuck in the past. You completely believe that she’s the life of the party, while still empathizing with the son who’s often left behind to clean up her messes.

How to watch: Stream on Amazon.

Friends With Money (2006)

Nicole Holofcener’s criminally underrated Friends With Money boasts one of the best ensembles in recent memory. The dramedy follows a group of women whose lifelong bonds are tested as the disparities in their financial brackets grow deeper. The friends include a stay-at-home mom living off a trust fund (Joan Cusack), a TV writer married to an arrogant jerk (Catherine Keener), and their single friend who cleans houses (Jennifer Aniston). 

McDormand is particularly hilarious as Jane, a prickly fashion designer who suspects her husband might be gay. With a penchant for screaming at strangers and making inappropriate jokes, the actor is exquisitely nasty as the type of friend you can always count on to tell it like it is. You just have to be mindful of where you take her in public. 

How to watch: Stream on HBO Max.

Burn After Reading (2008)

Brad Pitt is so good at playing a himbo that it’s easy to overlook McDormand’s exemplary work in Burn After Reading. The black comedy follows two doofy gym employees who stumble across a CD containing what they mistakenly identify as secret government documents. Attempting to profit off of the materials, the two engage in a series of misadventures that puts them in bed with some dangerous company.

As the plastic surgery-obsessed foil to Pitt’s dim-witted trainer, McDormand is deliciously vile as a woman trying to extort money from the CIA so she can fund various dream procedures. An unexpected source of inspiration came from Linda Tripp, the civil servant of Lewinsky-Clinton fame. After shepherding the sex scandal into the public spotlight in 1998, Tripp underwent a much-publicized makeover that the Coens studied while crafting the look for McDormand’s character. 

How to watch: Stream on Amazon.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Twenty-one years after claiming her first best-actress prize, McDormand won her second Oscar playing a grieving mother determined to pressure local law enforcement into solving the case of her daughter’s murder. As controversial for its treatment of racial themes as it was lauded for an authentic depiction of grief, the film showcased a fearsome performance from McDormand.

Asking every female nominee in every category to stand up at the 2018 Oscars ceremony, McDormand used her moment in the spotlight to push for more diversity in the film industry. “Look around, ladies and gentlemen, because we all have stories to tell and projects we need financed,” she declared to the crowd. “Don’t talk to us about it at the parties tonight. Invite us into your office in a couple days, or you can come to ours, whichever suits you best, and we’ll tell you all about them.”

How to watch: Stream on Amazon.

Nomadland (2020)

For an actor whose goal from the start of her career was to find the emotional truth in every character she plays, Nomadland offered McDormand a unique opportunity. She personally optioned the rights to Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book about a lost generation of baby boomers who travel across the country in campers. Directed by Chloé Zhao, the film is populated by a large ensemble of real-life nomads that provide so much of the film’s emotional texture. Yet McDormand, a two-time Oscar winner and undeniable movie star, fits seamlessly into every frame.

Though her character may be fictional, every note of the actor’s performance as Fern, a woman who loses everything in the Great Recession and decides to live her life as a van-dweller, rings true. An open admirer of Zhao’s previous film, The Rider, McDormand wanted Nomadland to evoke the same themes of self-preservation and determination. “With Fern, it’s kind of like Shane, or John Wayne’s character in The Searchers. These men that don’t seem to have a past, only a present, and no future. They just arrive fully formed, and they disappear,” McDormand told Vogue for her recent cover story. “Except with Fern, because she’s female, she’s got a lot of stuff with her. She’s got a whole van full of memories. Women don’t necessarily come out of nowhere.”

How to watch: Stream on Hulu.

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