Make The Case: 5 Essential Jennifer Jason Leigh Films

When Jennifer Jason Leigh shows up in the upcoming Quentin Tarantino film The Hateful Eight, people are going to wonder where she’s been for the past several years. A quick look at her filmography will reveal that not only has Leigh continued to work steadily in theater, television, and film, she has continued to do good work in all those mediums.

Part of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s reputation involves her tendency to play severely damaged, powerfully unhappy people. I honestly cannot think of someone who has played a hooker as many times as she has. While I will not pretend to know why Leigh gravitates towards these characters, I will say that I’m glad she does. There are a number of roles in her resume that can only be described as thankless. They are mildly problematic at best, and hopelessly one-note tunes at worst.

However, this is generally in terms of the way they are written. Leigh has proven consistently throughout her long career that she can take on shallow characters, and breathe immense portions of personality and overall life into them. Many of her characters can be described as broken or close-to-breaking, but very few of them are solely defined by those traits. Whether the film calls for it or not, Leigh plays people who are battered by tragedy, but do not let it set the tone for everything they say and do. Her best performances offer women who are far more complex and engaging than what has happened to them, or what is clearly going to happen to them. She has achieved this measure in mainstream films, as often as she had achieved it in smaller independent films, or even in movies that have very few redeeming qualities.

The filmography of Jennifer Jason Leigh is pretty rocky terrain. There are nonetheless some fantastic gems that are worth watching. The daughter of actor Vic Morrow (who was tragically killed by a helicopter during the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie) and screenwriter Barbara Turner, Leigh has been living or working with actors and acting for the whole of her life. It shows in the arresting confidence she displayed in her earliest roles, and it has only grown as time has gone on. As she has gotten older, she has had to settle for the kinds of roles that generally go to older women who are not named Meryl Streep. She has continued to find interesting approaches to even the most mundane characters, but it would be nice to see her get some higher profile gigs. Perhaps with the release of The Hateful Eight, things will change.

 

1. The Hitcher (1986)

By the time The Hitcher was released in 1986, Leigh had already been working as an actress for about a decade. It shows in film, which also features bleak atmospherics, a grim soundtrack, Rutger Hauer, and a fantastic knack for building tension. As a horror film, The Hitcher is pretty close to perfect, and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s small-but-crucial performance as the waitress Nash is certainly part of that. Not only is she considerably more interesting and likable than C. Thomas Howell as the main protagonist Jim Hasley, but her overall contributions to the film are much more meaningful. Her character does meet a horrific end, but The Hitcher gets points for having her death act as more than just motivation for Hasley. Her death emphasizes the sadistic commentary made by Hauer’s mysterious hitchhiker about people like Hasley, and her death is also extremely memorable. It is perhaps the most memorable part of the movie, and that isn’t simply because of the way it is designed and shot. It is also because Leigh takes a straightforward character, and makes that character her own. She creates a person whose death is terribly jarring. At that point, we have already connected to her.

2. Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989)

In this unhappy, manic adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr’s equally unhappy, manic novel, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s prostitute Tralala is most certainly not the standard hooker with a heart of gold. Like everyone else in Selby’s frightening depiction of Brooklyn, she is simply trying to survive. Unfortunately, because she is a woman with no real family or friends, she has to go through more than the rest, in order to get by in one piece on a day to day basis. Even so, she is perhaps the most sympathetic character in the entire story. Her struggle to retain a semblance of humanity in the face of increasingly shitty circumstances informs every one of her scenes, particularly the ones that are going to be almost impossible to shake after you have seen them. Last Exit to Brooklyn is a weird movie, but it has touches of realism that make the more frantic, surreal elements easier to digest. One of the most striking touches of realism is in Leigh’s layered, flawless performance.