Actress Parker Posey has appeared in some classic films, from Best in Show to Personal Velocity. That’s fitting for an actress who, after a short stint on the soap opera As The World Turns, made her feature film debut in Coneheads, followed rapidly by her breakout role in Richard Linklater’s 90s cult classic Dazed and Confused. She spent less than a year working on the soap opera before landing her breakout role, and Posey hasn’t slowed down since. A queen of indie movies, Posey has also made memorable appearances in bigger films like You’ve Got Mail and Blade: Trinity.



She was born (along with her twin brother Christopher) in Baltimore, Maryland in 1968. Parker’s family moved to Monroe, Louisiana, and later Laurel, Mississippi for her mother’s career as a chef and her father’s career working for car dealerships. She studied drama at the State University of New York at Purchase and booked her first role (on As The World Turns) not long after graduation. She’s been working steadily ever since and is a frequent collaborator of director Christopher Guest and has appeared in five of his great mockumentary movies: Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003), For Your Consideration (2006), and Mascots (2016).

While Posey hasn’t achieved A-list fame in her more than three decades of professional acting, she’s achieved something much more elusive and important: a solid, steady, long-lasting career as a film and television actress, and one of the most iconic and hippest faces of Gen X. One of the most underrated actors of the past three decades, let’s take a look at Parker Posey’s best performances.

7 Price Check

Price Check is a 2012 film starring Eric Mabius as Pete Cozy. Pete’s having a rough time in life. His debt is high, he hates his job, and all of it is affecting his marriage and family life. Parker Posey plays Pete’s new boss, Susan, a human energizer bunny, who draws Pete into the chaos of her life and work style, forcing him to work harder than ever. Posey is a force of nature here, playing somewhat against type but going all-in on the role.

6 Henry Fool

Henry Fool (1998) is the first film in a trilogy that also includes 2006’s Fay Grim and 2014’s Ned Rifle with Aubrey Plaza. Henry Fool (an incredible Thomas Jay Ryan) is a novelist who has just gotten out of a seven-year prison stint for attempted statutory rape. He is befriended by socially awkward Simon Grim, a garbage man who is inspired by Fool to write a poem that ends up winning the Nobel Prize. Parker Posey plays Simon’s sister Fay Grim, who he seduces and impregnates. As Simon’s star rises, Henry descends into a life of drinking in dive bars. This unclassifiable film from Hal Hartley is a funny, odd, brilliant independent movie that paved the way for a surprisingly suspenseful trilogy.

RELATED: Dazed and Confused Reunion Screenings Announced with Matthew McConaughey and Parker Posey

5 Fay Grim

Fay Grim takes place seven years after the events of Henry Fool. Parker Posey reprises her role as the title character, who is coerced by a CIA agent (Jeff Goldblum) to try to find mysterious notebooks that her fugitive husband Henry Fool supposedly has. Believing her husband is dead, Fay is immersed in a world of espionage as she goes to Paris in an attempt to retrieve some of the journal. The journals have all, at one point or another, landed in the hands of both her brother Simon and Henry. As the mystery deepens, Fay is informed of what the journals contain, raising the stakes and endangering her life. A surprisingly cool and downright awesome movie, Fay Grim is a stylistic, exciting, and mysterious movie that positions Posey as a badass female lead she doesn’t often get to play.

4 Best in Show

Best in Show is a 2000 mockumentary from the minds of Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy that chronicles the characters surrounding an exclusive dog show akin to the real life Westminster Dog Show. Parker Posey played Meg Snow, who along with her husband Hamilton, is a stereotypical yuppie from the suburbs of Chicago. Their Weimaraner, Beatrice, is entered in the competition. Poor Beatrice’s demeanor is severely affected by the Swans’ neurotic behavior. When Beatrice’s favorite toy goes missing, they frantically search for a replacement before the show starts. Though the ensemble cast (Catherine O’Hara, Michael McKean, Fred Willard, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch, Ed Begley Jr. and more) is incredible, Poset hilariously steals every scene she’s in.

3 Waiting for Guffman

Christopher Guest and the great Eugene Levy also wrote the 1996 mockumentary Waiting for Guffman in which Parker Posey plays the role of Libby Mae Brown. The film is about the making of a community theater production in the fictional town of Blaine, Missouri. The production, Red, White, and Blaine, is to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the town. Posey’s character is a delightfully bored employee of the local Dairy Queen who is cast in the play alongside other town residents. As usual, she’s incredibly naturalistic and organic in her work with Guest, and her combination of improvisation and character work is both very funny and emotionally intuitive.

2 Dazed and Confused

Parker Posey had her breakout role in Richard Linklater’s film from 1993 (which also introduced the world to Ben Affleck, Renee Zelwegger, Adam Goldberg, and Milla Jovovich), Dazed and Confused. She played a senior cheerleader named Darla who takes great joy in hazing freshman girls. When she infamously shouts “Air Raid,” the girls hit the ground, lying on their stomachs, while Poser gleefully cackles in a delightfully wicked performance. Posey improvised parts of her memorable performance in the film about the last day of high school in 1976, which also launched Matthew McConaughey’s career. Alright, alright, alright.

1 Party Girl

Party Girl featured Parker Posey as Mary, a free spirit who sleeps all day and parties all night. The 1995 film is notable for being the first film to make its premiere on the internet. Mary is arrested for throwing an underground rave and calls her godmother to bail her out. Mary goes to work for her godmother at the library to repay her debt. She gets inspired to learn the Dewey Decimal system after getting totally baked while at work, and the weird, aimless fun of the film just builds from there. Party Girl is so entertaining that it can make viewers nostalgic for the complete chaos of being in your 20s, and Posey is just iconic in it.