In 1984, Dianne Wiest traded her Broadway dazzle for a conservative cardigan to play the wife of a tyrannical preacher (John Lithgow) in Footloose, her film debut. Wiest then captured the attention of director Woody Allen, starring in five of his films. She won Academy Awards for her performances in Allen's Bullets Over Broadway and Hannah and Her Sisters, cementing her status as an accomplished actor.

Spanning decades, Wiest's career has included roles in cult classics like The Lost Boys, Edward Scissorhands, and Practical Magic. Her acting portfolio is diverse; she wrestled Rosamund Pike in I Care A Lot and counseled Gabriel Byrne as a mentor and seasoned therapist in HBO's lauded series In Treatment. Whatever the acting challenge, Wiest rises to it, reminding viewers how it's done.

10 'I Care A Lot' (2021)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78%

Though a premise like systematic elder abuse with a dash of theft should've been unpalatable to audiences, stars Rosamund Pike and Wiest served up performances worth savoring. As amoral conservator Marla Grayson, Pike selects the wrong senior citizen to swindle in Wiest's character, Jennifer, a Russian mob-connected woman unwilling to relinquish her fortune. Marla's cursory assessment of her target, coupled with her inflated self-confidence, makes Jennifer's unexpected retaliation glorious in the capable hands of Wiest.

In a dark comedy that ultimately careens into a thriller with a rising body count, Wiest has a rare opportunity to play Jennifer with devilishly smug abandon. Marla has found a worthy adversary in Jennifer, and audiences are treated to a battle royale of wills and barbs, including hilarious ones delivered by Wiest. This go-for-broke unexpected turn as Jennifer is a welcome departure for a brilliant actress sometimes relegated to less gritty roles.

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9 'The Birdcage' (1996)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%

The remake of the classic French comedy La Cage aux Folles (1978) stars Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as gay owners and performers of a drag club in Miami who are asked by their son Val (Dan Futterman) to "play straight" for his future in-laws. Val's in-laws-to-be are conservative senator Kevin Keeley (Gene Hackman) and his uptight wife Louise (Wiest), founding members of the "Coalition for Moral Order" committee who have traveled to South Beach to meet Val's mother and father. Over-the-top hysteria and hijinks ensue.

Having played a similar part in Footloose, Wiest is familiar with the body language and demeanor of a dutiful wife toeing the line, yet she adds an element of complexity with knowing observations that telegraph understanding. While her husband is woefully ignorant of Lane's drag performance as Val's mother, Wiest's Louise is hip to the ruse, patiently waiting for her husband to catch up. Her performance as Louise is understated, but Wiest conveys volumes with her eyes, resulting in some of the funniest reactions in the movie.

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8 'Let Them All Talk' (2020)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

Navigating a precarious pandemic landscape, director Steven Soderbergh made a movie set on a real cruise ship (the Queen Mary 2), with a shoestring budget, a screenplay that read more like an outline, and a single camera. He called upon screen legends to play the title characters Alice (Meryl Streep), Roberta (Candice Bergen), and Susan (Wiest), as well as young rising star Lucas Hedges as Alice's nephew, Tyler. In the movie, Alice, an award-winning author, invites her estranged friends on a cruise without explanation, leaving room for confusion, assumption, and general misunderstanding.

Shrouded in mystery, Roberta and Susan hypothesize why they're aboard this voyage with Alice, who effectively ghosts them upon arrival, appearing when it suits her. At sea, Susan is repeatedly wedged between two self-involved, unhappy people (Roberta is waiting for an overdue apology from an oblivious, aloof Alice), requiring her to play the peacekeeper. Still, Wiest uses the opportunity provided by Soderbergh's freedom of improvisation to insert comic relief and anchor the feuding friends to the present. Without her careful portrayal of Susan, audiences might've abandoned ship.

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7 'Rabbit Hole' (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

Written and based on David Lindsay-Abaire's play of the same name, Rabbit Hole takes audiences into the warren of a family grappling with loss. Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart play bereft parents, Becca and Howie, while Wiest portrays Becca's mother, Nat, who is also versed in the loss of a child. As the family members struggle to cope, irrevocable choices are made, and perspectives shift in moments of unexpected levity in a film that could've been morose but chose catharsis and individual character exploration.

For much of the movie, Becca's relationship with Nat is wrought with anger and frustration at Nat's generalized grief umbrella and the duo's inability to validate each other. Becca and Howie look outside their marriage for comfort, but breakthroughs happen when Becca and Nat have sincere exchanges. Kidman and Wiest produce some of the most poignant scenes as mother and daughter, and their performances deliver glimpses of what it looks like to listen.

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6 'Edward Scissorhands' (1990)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%

In Tim Burton's classic movie, Edward Scissorhands, an innovative creator (Vincent Price in his final appearance) dies before completing his final achievement: a human. His creation, equipped with everything but hands, Edward (Johnny Depp), must navigate life with elongated variations of nightmarish blades for digits sequestered in a house on a hill. One day, Peg the Avon Lady, played with bubbly warmth by Wiest, calls upon his door with a product sales quota in mind but leaves with a bewildered scissor-handed man instead.

Peg immediately enchants audiences, as she is the only one in the town to treat Edward like a person rather than a monster. Asymmetrical haircuts and gravity-defying sculptural topiaries ravage the community as Edward acclimates to his new home with Peg and her family. The disarming sweetness Wiest channels through Peg made her a cinematic mother to remember; viewers believed Peg when she saw a boy who needed a family just like anyone else, irrespective of how problematic sleeping on a waterbed would become.

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5 'Hannah and Her Sisters' (1986)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

In an Academy Award-winning role, Wiest plays Holly in the Woody Allen comedy. The movie follows the trio of sisters throughout three Thanksgivings, told from varying perspectives. Hannah (Mia Farrow) is the caretaker of the trifecta, successful and available to lend money and guidance to "free spirit" Holly, while sister Lee (Barbara Hershey) is having an affair with Hannah's husband (Michael Caine). Miraculously, the siblings don't come to blows, and they maneuver three holiday seasons without bloodshed despite committing crimes of the heart and accruing sizable debts.

Wiest's participation in Allen's films resulted in critical praise. However, her characters shared a commonality: lonely spinsters desperate to find a man. In Hannah and Her Sisters, she added depth and dimension to a woman who continuously relied on the help of her family but portrayed Holly's immaturity with earnest wonder and artistic flair, making her endearing and distinct. Audiences responded to the movie favorably, and they were rooting for Holly to find her purpose because Wiest convinced them to care.

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4 'Radio Days' (1987)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

Woody Allen's Radio Days unfolds in a series of semi-autobiographical nostalgic 1940s-era flashbacks as a middle-aged man (voiced by Allen) recounts memories from his youth as a Jewish kid, Joe (a young Seth Green) from Rockaway, New York. Seasoned with big band sounds from Joe's childhood, the movie is a mixture of stories about the lives of his relatives and the larger-than-life tales heard on radio shows as he remembers them. Old Hollywood glamour, life lessons, and the power of the imagination combine to make this one of Allen's most successful pieces of visual storytelling.

One interspersed storyline recalls Joe's Aunt Bea (Wiest), a live-in member of his household exhaustively searching for Mr. Right but unlucky in love. As Bea, Wiest exudes boundless enthusiasm towards chosen suitors, only to be thwarted in every scenario (including but not limited to a date involving aliens). She is forced to hold emotional court in optimism and rejection, yet remains hopeful by the end of the movie and the start of 1944, a stunning resolve considering her dating record, but graciously delivered by Wiest.

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3 'Parenthood' (1989)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

Ron Howard's ensemble hit movie Parenthood showcases the highs and lows of parenting and the bonds created by family, for better or worse. The Bruckman family's multi-generational unit has something for everyone: a black sheep, a child prodigy, an unplanned geriatric pregnancy, and an uncommunicative preteen Joaquin Phoenix as Garry. The movie is so beloved that it begged to be revisited in the form of a television show debuting on NBC in 2010.

The second of the oldest siblings in the Bruckman clan is Helen, played by Wiest in another Academy Award Nominated performance. A single mother to two teenagers (Martha Plimpton and Phoenix), Helen desperately tries to foster autonomy and self-expression, only to be rebuffed and criticized by her children. Wiest embodies the character like a second skin, convincingly shattered by the actions of her children in one scene and heroically rescuing them in the next. The role of Helen became one of Wiest's most memorable, possibly because she was so relatable, but primarily because of her innate ability.

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2 'The Purple Rose of Cairo' (1985)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

In this Depression-era Woody Allen film, Mia Farrow plays a woman who frequently escapes reality by going to the movies. One afternoon, while watching repeat showings of The Purple Rose of Cairo, an actor in the film, Tom, played by Jeff Daniels, exits the screen and leaves with Farrow. Within this magical tale are supporting characters also navigating the hardships of the period, including self-professed "working girl" Emma (Wiest), who is also interested in spending time with the handsome escaped movie character. The plot thickens when the Hollywood actor who created Tom, Gil Shepherd (Daniels again), enters the town searching for his rogue on-screen (now off-screen) character.

Tom encounters Emma while exploring the outside of the silver screen, and she invites him back to her brothel, a foreign concept to the movie character. Once inside and surrounded by women, Tom's wistful assertion that he wants no woman but Farrow amazes Emma. Wiest's thoughtful rumination of the possibility that a man could be represented differently is a pivotal moment in the movie. In her eyes, possibilities she had seldom considered were realized.

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1 'Bullets Over Broadway' (1994)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

In Bullets Over Broadway, the year is 1929, and John Cusack is young playwright David Shayne who, desperate to finance his play, makes a deal with a mobster, Nick Valenti (Joe Viterelli). The conditions of this gangland deal require Valenti's non-actor chorus line girlfriend, Olive (Jennifer Tilly), to have a pivotal role in David's play. Offended and exasperated by this inclusion, seasoned stage actors in the company revolt. To David's astonishment, the mobster assigned to protect Olive (Chazz Palminteri) exhibits more writing talent than the young playwright, and they collaborate on rewrites to the script.

In another Oscar-winning performance, as a washed-up former Grand Dame of the Theater, Helen Sinclair, Wiest thrives. Everyone is immediately alerted to her presence, from her wardrobe to her grandiose way of speaking. Aware of the playwright's lust for Broadway accolades, Sinclair appeals to his vanity and manipulates Shayne into writing a more palatable part for her, folding him into a romance. Wiest leaves everything on the stage floor without verging on camp; the lines delivered by Helen Sinclair are hilarious, and she steals the show.

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