First appearing in an episode of the hit Disney Channel series Hannah Montanna, Alison Brie has broken out to become one of the most recognizable performers currently working and has become part of Hollywood royalty, being married to star Dave Franco, with whom she often collaborates. A talented actress who has shown a great ability for comedy and drama alike, Brie is a performer like no other, one who is so incredibly specific that her name can be used as a descriptive word for a type of performance. When Marvel Studios was looking to cast the role of She-Hulk, it was reported they were looking for an ‘Alison Brie type’.
While that can mean many things, over the course of her career Brie has played a number of roles that tend to be very sweet and compassionate people as well as strong go-getters who are very determined to accomplish a goal. The performer also is ideal for casting directors, as she has proven she can work with any genre and even any medium having a steady career in voice work. From roles in Academy Award-nominated films to cult television series and working with some of the most talented filmmakers, storytellers, and performers. Brie has a career filled with great roles. These are the best Alison Brie performances across film and television.
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9 The Little Hours
Gunpowder & Sky
Set in the 14th Century, The Little Hours tells the story of three nuns behaving badly at a convent in the countryside, seducing a young gardener, who himself is posing as a deaf-mute (played by Brie’s real-life husband Dave Franco) and on the run for committing adultery with a lord’s wife. Brie stars as one of the nuns and the film use contemporary dialogue and humor to create a clash of setting and subject with language to make a classic sex comedy but with nuns at the center. Brie stars as Sister Alessandra alongside Aubrey Plaza (whose husband writes and directs) and Kate Micucci as the other two nuns in this incredibly humorous, very vulgar, and extremely clever comedy.
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8 Happiest Season
Netflix
While movie theaters were shut down in 2020 due to COVID-19, Brie had an incredibly solid year with four films being released across various platforms and one was the holiday film Happiest Season. The film focuses on a couple Abby (Kirsten Stewart) and Harper (Mackenzie Davis) who are invited to spend the holidays with Harper’s family, although she has yet to come out to her conservative family. The film’s central focus is on the relationship between Abby and Harper, but the couple can’t work if Harper can’t be upfront with her family, and one family member is Brie’s character Sloane. Sloane is the older sister and one that Harper has a competitive nature, and Brie perfectly sells the extremely uptight type-A personality that helps balance out this comedic ensemble to become a new holiday classic.
7 Mad Men
Lionsgate Television
Mad Men is arguably Brie’s breakout role, where she stars as Trudy Campbell, the wife of Pete Campbell. Through the course of seven seasons, Trudy must deal with her husband’s constant infidelities and showcase just one of the many women who have to deal with the patriarchal power systems at work in the 1960s. While Brie would later go on to a number of comedic performances, it was her role on Mad Men that showed early on how capable she was in many genres.
6 Bojack Horseman
For six seasons, Brie voiced the character of Diane Nguyen on the hit Netflix series Bojack Horseman, a ghostwriter who has a complicated relationship with the show’s lead character. Diane is a great character who is richly defined as being both troubled in her own way, like many of the characters on this extremely depressing show; Diane is also one who wants to be better and wants others around her to be better. Bojack Horseman is an incredible series that deals with dark complex issues of loneliness, depression, and self-destructive personalties. While a great performance, one of the reasons the role isn’t higher is that there certainly were issues with having Brie voice a character who is half-Vietnamese, something Brie herself apologized for, later on.
5 Promising Young Woman
Focus Features / Universal Picture
Brie’s role in 2020’s Academy Award-winning film Promising Young Woman is a minor but vital one in the film. She plays Madison McPhee, a former classmate of the main character Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan) who, after refusing to acknowledge that a classmate of theirs was sexually assaulted, is manipulated by Cassie to think she was taken advantage of while under the influence.
While Cassie eventually reveals to Madison that nothing happened, the psychological warfare waged on the character asks the audience a dark ethical question: while Madison may be complicit in covering up something awful does that justify making her think she was assaulted? The film never gives an answer, but Brie’s performance as distant and materialistic at the start but broken and saddened in her final scene shows her dramatic range.
4 The Lego Movie
Warner Bros.
In the second animated performance of Brie on this list, in The Lego Movie, Brie voices Princess Unikitty, a master builder who lives in Cloud Cuckoo Land. After seeing her home be destroyed, the character must reckon with feeling an emotion other than happiness for the first time in her life: anger/sadness. The character’s outward persona is a sweet kind individual but one of the funniest elements of the character is the violent rage she gets when overwhelmed.
The Lego Movie is a clever send-up of media tropes as seen through the lens of a child playing with toys, and Princess Unikitty is a great example of how a child makes up a characterization for a character that’s primary defining features are being a hybrid between a cat and a unicorn. The character was successful enough that Unikitty got a TV spin-off show.
3 Sleeping With Other People
IFC Films
Sleeping With Other People tells the story of Lainey (Alison Brie) and Jake (Jason Sudekis), two individuals who, after losing their virginity to each other in a one-night stand, reunite and vow to form a friendship with one another despite their past history with relationships only being sexual in nature. The film is very much a romantic comedy in the vein of When Harry Met Sally, just with a more modern sense of humor and a sexual dynamic put front and center. Brie steps into the role of Lainey with ease, and being her big starring vehicle after Community had officially wrapped up, showed her ability to carry a leading role, but she was not just Annie from Community.
2 GLOW
The hit Netflix series GLOW is a fictionalized story about the 1980s syndicated women’s professional wrestling circuit Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW). Brie starred as Ruth Wilder, a struggling actress who finds her way into the sport and begins forming a bond with the girls, and is cast as the villainous Russian caricature “Zoya the Destroya,” to fight her former friend Debbie “Liberty Belle” Eagan, who Ruth betrayed by having an affair with her husband.
GLOW was praised for all three seasons for its writing, characterization that fleshed out all the wrestlers, and the series’ attention to detail regarding 80’s aesthetics. Brie said GLOW was her favorite job and her performance earned nominations for The Critic’s Choice Awards, The Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Golden Globes. The series was canceled before it could get a proper conclusion, yet GLOW stands as a breakout vehicle for a number of great performers and another wonderful addition to Brie’s resume.
1 Community
Sony Pictures Television
Alison Brie has had a long career with a variety of roles, but it is hard to deny that her most iconic role was that of Annie Eddison on the hit cult comedy series Community. The series was set at a fictional community college and the lives of its various students, and the series was often known for its meta-humor, homages to classic films, and pop culture references that both satirized but embraced classic network clichés.
When the series starts, Annie Eddison is the typical overachiever, she is organized and at first framed as the young naive one of the group. But as the series progress, and her friendship with the other members of her study group and moving in with her friends Troy and Abed, she begins to become more relaxed and more aware of her situations. While typically sweet, she is also prone to fits of anger and her assertive competitive nature leads to some of the funniest moments in the series’ signature paintball episodes. This might not be her breakout role, but for many, Community is what put Allison Brie on the map and is the defining performance of her impressive career.
