(Credits: Alamy)
Thu 30 October 2025 13:30, UK
One of the highlights of this year’s smash hit horror-thriller Weapons (and there were many, because it’s flipping amazing) was undoubtedly Julia Garner‘s superb turn as the teacher under scrutiny and immense pressure from the frankly furious parents of a small town after all the kids in her class suddenly vanish in the middle of the night.
She is brilliant in the lead role as she goes through all the emotions that the innocent and accused are likely to experience: fear, confusion, righteous anger, and the almost inevitable decision to drown the lot in as much alcohol as possible with the curtains closed.
It’s the latest in a string of performances from Garner that now have her right up there in terms of the great talents of the modern era, thanks to her work in series like the peerless spy drama The Americans and alongside Jason Bateman in Netflix’s Ozark. She’s also proved she can genre-hop with the best of them when it comes to films, starring in this year’s ‘nobody asked for this but it’s quite good I suppose’ Fantastic Four reboot in addition to horrors like the Rosemary’s Baby prequel Apartment 7a and Wolf Man.
That latter didn’t raise much noise at the box office but has performed much better on streaming sites as we approach Halloween, serving as a reboot of the old Universal Pictures creature features that were popular in the early 1940s. That was also an era that Garner knows well; she grew up glued to the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) channel, avidly studying actors like Bette Davis and Vivien Leigh, learning how to hold the audience’s gaze, with her favourite film being Davis’ drama All About Eve from 1950.
Garner also drew influence from several movies of the late ‘60s and ’70s, when New Hollywood was allowing younger directors to push for more truth in moviemaking and boundaries were breaking in terms of what could and couldn’t be shown. She cites some landmark performances as ones that every actor, aspiring or otherwise, should watch, including some by Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro and Gena Rowlands.
Describing those important performances, she told Backstage, “There are a few. In terms of acting, Kramer vs Kramer. The Deer Hunter has great acting. Rosemary’s Baby, A Woman Under the Influence, Raging Bull, Sophie’s Choice, all of those movies from the 1970s, they’re inspiring. Watching those movies makes me want to act.”
She reserved special praise for the 1980 Martin Scorsese black and white boxing biopic that regularly appears in lists of the finest movies of all time and the realism at play throughout, especially from the film’s two leads, adding, “Rewatching Raging Bull, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, you’re like, ‘I want to act’. The reason those characters are so great is because they’ve really created a person.”
Garner is currently filming a TV series called The Altruists, the true-life tale of the collapse of cryptocurrency FTX, which will be released on Netflix. Masters of the Air’s Anthony Boyle is also joining her in the series based around the story of FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud.
Julia Garner’s six movies everyone should see:
- Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
- A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)
- The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)
- Kramer vs Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979)
- Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
- Sophie’s Choice (Alan J Pakula, 1982)
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