Marissa Ribisi
Ribisi's filmography is a tour of a specific slice of 1990s American film. She is Cynthia in Dazed and Confused, Holly in The Brady Bunch Movie, Charlotte in Noah Baumbach's debut Kicking and Screaming, Kimmy in Pleasantville, Amy Wilson in Clint Eastwood's True Crime, and Dora in 100 Girls, with Don's Plum somewhere in there too. Add the television guest work listed on Wikipedia, including Friends, Felicity, Grace Under Fire and Tales of the City, and you have someone who worked steadily through the decade without ever being sold as a lead.
The parts share a quality. She played the sharp, slightly withdrawn girl at the edge of the group, the one who notices what the more confident characters are doing and declines to join in. Linklater and Baumbach both cast her for it in the same period, which is not a coincidence. In an ensemble stuffed with actors performing at each other, she was reliably the one underplaying, and that is why she registers in films where she has a fraction of the screen time.
The credits listed here thin out sharply after the early 2000s, with The Patron Saint of Liars and Union Square in the late 1990s and then a long quiet stretch, until she reappears as Helen in the 2021 series On the Verge. She is the twin sister of the actor Giovanni Ribisi.
Movies (9)
TV (3)
Where to start with Marissa Ribisi
Dazed and Confused is the obvious first watch and still the best showcase. In a film where almost everyone is playing at being cool, Cynthia is the character who has clearly read a book, and Ribisi keeps her dry rather than making her a punchline.
Pleasantville is the next stop, a much bigger production that uses her in the same key. Then go to Kicking and Screaming, Baumbach's first feature, which is talky and mean and exactly the environment her underplaying suits. True Crime puts her in an Eastwood picture, The Brady Bunch Movie is the broad studio comedy of the group, and 100 Girls is the odd late-1990s one. On the Verge is where to see her after the long gap.