Heather Graham

Heather Graham’s roller skating in Boogie Nights (1997) is an obvious thing to remember, but it is the vulnerability that makes Rollergirl worth watching. Paul Thomas Anderson gives her room within a crowded drama about the pornography business. We felt protective of Rollergirl because Graham makes her vulnerability apparent even amid the skating and the sex. The rise-and-fall story grows familiar, though the care taken over the performances keeps the long evening absorbing. Graham is one reason to stay with it.

Her early notice came as Nadine in Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy (1989). In Doug Liman’s Swingers (1996), she plays Lorraine, a supporting part in an ensemble we like. Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn make the friendship convincing, even when the men’s collective effort to look cool grows wearing. We recommend the film warmly, but its pleasures should not be confused with the amount it gives Graham to do. Boogie Nights offers better evidence of what she can bring to a substantial role.

The comedies that followed included Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), as Felicity Shagwell, and The Hangover (2009), as Jade. Graham is a dependable ensemble comic actor, and there is no reason to treat that work as beneath her. The recurring emphasis on glamour and desirability is more limiting. Too often, the parts leave little room for the intensity that made her earlier dramatic work noticeable.

With Half Magic (2018) and Chosen Family (2024), she has moved into writing and directing while continuing to act. The move towards female-centred comedy makes sense for someone so often cast to be looked at. Half Magic addresses sexism in the film industry, a subject plainly relevant to the limitations of that casting. Start with Boogie Nights, allowing for its familiar story, and watch how much Graham contributes without being the centre of it.