Rashida Jones

Jones has spent much of her career being the sane person in a room of lunatics, which is the least rewarded job in comedy. Ann Perkins on Parks and Recreation is written as a straight woman, and Jones plays her as somebody quietly aware that she is the boring one, which is the actual joke and much harder to land than the broad parts around her. Karen Filippelli on The Office got a similar deal, a reasonable woman dropped into a show about people who are not.

She writes better parts for herself than she is offered. Celeste and Jesse Forever, which she co-wrote and leads, gives her a woman who is controlling, superior and wrong, and it is the sharpest performance in her filmography. She co-wrote the story for Toy Story 4, directed the first episode of the documentary series Hot Girls Wanted and produced it, and made Quincy, the Netflix film about her father Quincy Jones, which won the Grammy for Best Music Film.

The rest is a good spread. She was Louisa Fenn on Boston Public for two years before any of the comedy, led Angie Tribeca through a relentless police-procedural parody, played the junior lawyer taking depositions in The Social Network, and does a lot of animation, including Alva in Klaus. Sunny, her 2024 series, is the closest television has come to using the prickliness she keeps writing for herself. She has a Golden Globe nomination, two Primetime Emmy nominations, a Grammy, and a place on Time's 2025 list of the hundred most influential people in the world.