Dianne Wiest, the Oscar-winning star of Bullets Over Broadway and Hannah and Her Sisters, celebrates her 78th birthday with three major movies on the horizon. Here we rank her 20 best film performances, showcasing an almost flawless career.
Wiest’s filmography includes a baffling curio produced by Ismail Merchant, where she plays an opera singer who deceives her gay teenage son into believing his father is dead by visiting a fake grave each year. The plot twists further when the father is murdered by his own gay pickup, witnessed by the son from a wardrobe. Wiest flails around Paris in a turban, with Jane Birkin as a fake therapist and Vanessa Redgrave and Jerry Hall making cameos.
Her debut came in a minor studio follow-up to Claudia Weill’s indie comedy Girlfriends. Wiest, credited with a single “N”, has three scenes as the chipper cousin to a lovesick maths professor (Jill Clayburgh), dispensing romantic advice and sitting with Michael Douglas at a wedding party.
In another early role, Wiest plays Isabelle, confidante to Molly (Meryl Streep), who has fallen for Frank (Robert De Niro). Her intuition allows the film to skip a big confession scene when she asks, “I haven’t seen you for weeks – who is it?” causing Molly to blurt out the truth and flee.
Wiest also appears as the patient ex-wife of an elderly horticulturist turned drug mule (Clint Eastwood), encouraging him to reflect on his selfish life through understated, regretful looks. A terminal illness adds emotional weight, similar to her role as Michael J Fox’s dying mother in Bright Lights, Big City.
As one of the friendly neighbourhood witches raising orphaned nieces (Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman), Wiest and Stockard Channing provide comic relief, boogieing around the kitchen while the film mixes wackiness with dark themes. The four leads return this year in a sequel filmed partly in London.
