Joanna Cassidy

Joanna Cassidy looks capable before anyone has explained what her character can do. As Zhora in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), her athletic presence makes that impression convincing. We were drawn to her physical assurance, especially in a film whose detective story can feel thin beside its city. She gives us someone to watch when the surroundings threaten to take all our attention. The chilly pace remains a reservation, but Scott makes good use of the strength she brings to a part.

That breakthrough was followed by work that makes a narrow view of her as an action performer hard to sustain. She was a co-lead as journalist Claire Stryder in Under Fire (1983), and played Jo Jo White opposite Dabney Coleman in the sitcom Buffalo Bill (1983–84). The latter made use of her comic timing and ease within an ensemble. Her distinctive laugh belongs in any account of her acting alongside the fight work; comedy is no sideline to her strengths.

Robert Zemeckis’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), with Cassidy as Dolores, puts those strengths inside a much busier film. It is an unusually convincing mixture of human and cartoon performers, and we recommend it warmly despite a mystery that sometimes competes with the jokes. Cassidy’s practical intelligence suits a comedy that needs its people to be credible however impossible their company. Her contribution is worth attending to rather than treating the live-action cast as a necessary inconvenience between feats of animation.

The later career includes supporting film parts and recurring television work, notably Margaret Chenowith in Six Feet Under (2001–05). The nuance of that dramatic work deserves attention alongside the more immediately apparent athleticism. Leading opportunities became limited after the mid-1980s, which gives us fewer substantial film parts on which to judge her, but no reason to dismiss the smaller ones. Start with Blade Runner and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but leave room for Buffalo Bill before deciding what kind of actor she is.