Mia Farrow

Listen to Mia Farrow’s reedy voice, then watch how much she can change with a small movement of her face. Her delicacy is easy to notice; the distinctions she makes between apparently vulnerable women take more attention. We rate her most highly when that careful work makes a character under pressure seem particular rather than merely fragile. Rosemary’s Baby (1968) was the breakthrough, but it also helped establish an image her later work would complicate.

Her work became more varied across thirteen films with writer-director Woody Allen between 1980 and 1992. Broadway Danny Rose (1984) helped loosen the early typecasting, while The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) gave her vulnerability a fantastical setting. In Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), she helped hold together an ensemble’s family tensions. That ensemble work matters more to our view of her than the familiar description of a waif.

In Husbands and Wives (1992), her Judy Roth is valuable because she does not simply duplicate Allen’s Gabe. Farrow gives the ensemble another temperament, helping a film full of similar disappointments avoid becoming a series of speeches by the same person. We laughed at the film because the effort of spending time with Sydney Pollack’s unhappy Jack felt so familiar. Judy Davis and Pollack deserve much of the credit for the comedy, but Farrow helps keep the familiar complaints from becoming monotonous.

There are limits to the approach. In the later Allen roles, quiet pressure can settle into passive aggression, a habit that risks making the performance seem narrower than the actor. Husbands and Wives also has a restless documentary style that sometimes distracts from the people we want to watch, though their differences keep us interested. It is a good film with an irritating habit, and Farrow is part of the reason to stay with it. Start there for her work with other actors, then try Broadway Danny Rose before deciding that she only does delicate.