Isla Fisher
Isla Fisher is an actor, born 1976.
Fisher was born in Muscat to Scottish parents, grew up in Australia, and started out in television commercials before joining Home and Away as Shannon Reed, a run that lasted three years and brought two Logie nominations. She moved to Hollywood via Scooby-Doo in 2002 and then spent a decade being the funniest person in other people's comedies.
Wedding Crashers is the template. Gloria is a small part in a big film and Fisher plays her without a shred of self-protection: no winking, no signalling that she knows the character is ridiculous, just need at full volume. That commitment is the entire skill. It is also why she is so good in animation, where the voice has to do everything, and Beans in Rango is her best performance in any medium, a lizard with a stress condition played completely straight.
The dramatic work is thinner but not absent. Myrtle in The Great Gatsby is well cast, and Nocturnal Animals uses her deliberately as a visual echo of Amy Adams. Otherwise the ensembles have served her well: Now You See Me, Tag, Bachelorette, a stretch of Arrested Development, and Wolf Like Me, a comedy-drama that hands her far more room than the films usually bother to. She has also written books for young readers.
Movies (36)
- Now You See Me: Now You Don't (2025)
- Rango (2011)
- Playdate (2025)
- Now You See Me (2013)
- Horton Hears a Who! (2008)
- Scooby-Doo (2002)
- Dog Man (2025)
- The Great Gatsby (2013)
- Rise of the Guardians (2012)
- Wedding Crashers (2005)
- Tag (2018)
- Nocturnal Animals (2016)
- Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)
- Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (2025)
- Jay Kelly (2025)
- Strays (2023)
- Definitely, Maybe (2008)
- Keeping Up with the Joneses (2016)
- Grimsby (2016)
- Back to the Outback (2021)
- Hot Rod (2007)
- Visions (2015)
- Godmothered (2020)
- I ♥ Huckabees (2004)
- Wedding Daze (2006)
- London (2005)
- The Lookout (2007)
- Greed (2019)
- Burke & Hare (2010)
- Bachelorette (2012)
TV (8)
Where to start with Isla Fisher
Gloria turns up a third of the way into Wedding Crashers and hijacks the film, and that supporting part is the correct entry point. Everything Fisher does well is in it. Then Rango, which asks for the same commitment in voice alone and gets a real performance out of a cartoon lizard.
Now You See Me is the biggest hit and the least of her, so treat it as background. Nocturnal Animals and The Great Gatsby are the two that use her dramatically, and both cast her for a specific quality rather than for a name.
Bachelorette is the sharpest comedy on the list and by far the meanest. Arrested Development gives her a very funny recurring joke to play. Wolf Like Me is the recent one, and it offers more than the films generally do.
The comedies
Wedding Crashers is the breakout and still the funniest thing she has done, a performance so committed the film keeps having to work around it. The rest are the studio comedies she is generally rather too good for.
The dramatic work
Nocturnal Animals is the film that should have changed how she gets cast, and The Great Gatsby gives her a Myrtle with far more going on than the page allows. The Lookout is the small underseen one.
The family and voice work
The animation and family end, which is a large share of the filmography. Rango is the best film of the group by a distance, and Scooby-Doo is where a lot of people first noticed her at all.