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15 Actresses Who Can Play Any Role

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Nazarii Verbitskiy

Entertainment - August 13th 2026, 22:00 GMT+2

15. Scarlett Johansson

Put the lonely newlywed from *Lost in Translation*, the predatory alien from *Under the Skin*, and Black Widow at the same dinner table, and their shared face would be the least believable detail. Scarlett Johansson moves from near-silent unease to blockbuster physicality without dragging the same mannerisms along. Her voice alone made Samantha fully present in *Her*, while *Marriage Story* and *Jojo Rabbit* earned her two Oscar nominations at the same ceremony. Intimacy, satire, science fiction, action—Johansson speaks every cinematic language fluently. | © Marvel Studios

14. Sandra Bullock

Sandra Bullock can turn panic into a punchline without draining either of its urgency. That grounded, quick-thinking quality made *Speed* believable, while *Miss Congeniality* and *The Heat* revealed how fearlessly she commits to physical comedy. *Gravity* removed the wisecracks and left her carrying enormous stretches of a space thriller virtually alone; *The Blind Side* brought her an Oscar. Bullock’s signature warmth survives almost every genre, yet she knows when to shut it off, as her fiercely guarded survivor in *Bird Box* demonstrated. | © Paramount Pictures

13. Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence often looks as though someone started filming before she had time to “perform,” which explains why wildly different characters feel so immediate. The hardened teenager of *Winter’s Bone* barely resembles the volatile widow in *Silver Linings Playbook*, let alone the reluctant revolutionary anchoring *The Hunger Games*. She surrendered to operatic panic in *mother!* and bulldozed through old-school physical comedy in *No Hard Feelings*. Whether the material is intimate, absurd, or blockbuster-sized, Lawrence keeps finding the impulsive human being buried beneath the screenplay. | © Apple TV

12. Emily Blunt

Emily Blunt made sarcasm look like an Olympic event in *The Devil Wears Prada*, then became one of modern action cinema’s most convincing soldiers in *Edge of Tomorrow*. She navigated moral quicksand as an FBI agent in *Sicario*, held a terrified family together in the dialogue-light *A Quiet Place*, and sang and danced her way through *Mary Poppins Returns*. Even with limited screen time in *Oppenheimer*, she gave Kitty a ferocity the film could not contain. Blunt can sharpen, soften, or completely rearrange her presence on command. | © Universal Studios

11. Anne Hathaway

The princess-to-prestige pipeline rarely takes turns as wild as Anne Hathaway’s. Her Kym in *Rachel Getting Married* is abrasive, wounded, and painfully alert to every family slight; Fantine in *Les Misérables* is stripped almost entirely to despair. Hathaway then slips easily into Selina Kyle’s amused calculation in *The Dark Knight Rises* or sends up celebrity vanity as Daphne Kluger in *Ocean’s 8*. She can play broad comedy without becoming hollow and naked sincerity without turning syrupy—a balancing act far trickier than wearing glass slippers. | © Focus Features

10. Michelle Williams

Michelle Williams can make silence feel densely written. Her inward performances in *Wendy and Lucy*, *Blue Valentine*, and *Manchester by the Sea* reveal emotional damage through posture, breath, and the precise moment a character looks away. Then she switches gears: *My Week with Marilyn* captures both Monroe’s radiance and exhausting self-consciousness, while *Fosse/Verdon* gives Gwen Verdon wit, steel, and musical vitality. Even amid the polished spectacle of *The Greatest Showman*, Williams finds an undertow of melancholy. In her hands, grief never arrives in the same shape twice. | © Amazon Studios

9. Cate Blanchett

Queen Elizabeth I, Katharine Hepburn, a Bob Dylan incarnation, and an Asgardian goddess should not look like sensible stops along one career path. Cate Blanchett somehow makes them feel inevitable. She turns social collapse into agonizing comedy in *Blue Jasmine*, plays romantic restraint with exquisite control in *Carol*, and builds an entire architecture of power around Lydia Tár’s voice and posture in *Tár*. Then *Thor: Ragnarok* lets her stride into full comic-book camp and enjoy every second. Blanchett knows when to go microscopic and when to eat the scenery, silverware included. | © MUBI

8. Saoirse Ronan

Saoirse Ronan was still a child when *Atonement* asked her to make one catastrophic lie feel chillingly considered rather than melodramatic. Since then, she has created the homesick restraint of *Brooklyn*, the combustible teenage ego of *Lady Bird*, and Jo March’s restless ambition in *Little Women* without recycling a single emotional beat. *The Outrun* pushed her into the harsher territory of addiction and recovery, proving her work has only grown more fearless. Her accents draw attention, but her real gift is making stubbornness reveal a different wound every time. | © Apple TV+

7. Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman’s screen intelligence is so pronounced that filmmakers frequently cast her as a woman maintaining control—then wait for that control to crack. *Black Swan* transforms discipline into terror; *Jackie* places public composure and private shock in the same frame; *May December* turns an actress’s imitation into a form of trespass. She has also carried dystopian action in *V for Vendetta*, cerebral science fiction in *Annihilation*, and romantic comedy in *No Strings Attached*. Portman’s restraint never means passivity; something sharp is always moving beneath the surface. | © Marvel Studios

Meryl Streep Doubt — 6. Meryl Streep

The accents receive the headlines, but Meryl Streep’s real trick is social transformation. Sophie in *Sophie’s Choice* carries history in her body, while Miranda Priestly in *The Devil Wears Prada* controls rooms by lowering her voice. Donna in *Mamma Mia!* essentially throws dignity into the Aegean Sea and sings after it, yet the joy never feels condescending. Add the formidable nun of *Doubt*, the peculiar Susan Orlean of *Adaptation*, and the glorious vanity of *Death Becomes Her*. Streep rebuilds a character’s class, confidence, and relationship with attention from scratch. | © Miramax Films

5. Jessica Chastain

The tightly controlled CIA analyst in *Zero Dark Thirty* and the exuberant televangelist of *The Eyes of Tammy Faye* appear to share no dramatic DNA. Jessica Chastain specializes in intensity, but she keeps changing its temperature: icy and verbal in *Molly’s Game*, feverish and dangerous in *Crimson Peak*, wounded yet musical in *George & Tammy*. Her Oscar-winning Tammy Faye remains especially revealing because the makeup never does the acting for her; the warmth comes from within. Chastain does not confuse power with stiffness, leaving even her most commanding women emotionally exposed. | © Greenwich Entertainment

4. Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman appears to regard a safe career choice as a personal insult. After becoming a conventional movie star, she spent decades bending that image into stranger forms: murderously ambitious in *To Die For*, operatically romantic in *Moulin Rouge!*, haunted in *The Others*, and nearly unrecognizable as a battered detective in *Destroyer*. *The Hours*, *Dogville*, and *Birth* all rely on radically different shades of stillness, while *Big Little Lies* exposes terror underneath expensive perfection. Kidman can make statuesque glamour feel seductive, threatening, brittle, or completely irrelevant. | © A24

3. Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore cries beautifully, which may explain why her range is occasionally reduced to “emotionally devastated woman.” Her filmography tells a much livelier story. She gives *Boogie Nights* its bruised maternal heart, turns Maude Lebowski into a hilariously imperious performance artist, and serves cheerfully deranged villainy in *Kingsman: The Golden Circle*. *Safe* and *Still Alice* show how differently she maps a body losing certainty, while *May December* makes domestic sweetness feel quietly menacing. Moore’s emotional openness is not a default setting; it is a precision instrument. | © Netflix

2. Tilda Swinton

A four-century nobleman who changes sex, a panicked corporate counsel, a powdered authoritarian bureaucrat, and three characters in one horror film: Tilda Swinton’s résumé sounds like a casting department lost a bet. *Orlando*, *Michael Clayton*, *Snowpiercer*, and *Suspiria* barely begin to cover her appetite for transformation. She also makes maternal despair almost unbearable in *We Need to Talk About Kevin* and turns centuries of vampire boredom into dry romance in *Only Lovers Left Alive*. Swinton changes more than her appearance; she seems to adopt a different operating system for every role. | © Sony Pictures Classics

1. Margot Robbie

Margot Robbie’s most useful acting tool may be the audience’s habit of underestimating her. In *The Wolf of Wall Street*, she turned what could have been a decorative-wife role into a ruthless power struggle. *I, Tonya* weaponized physicality and defensive humor; *Barbie* demanded luminous sincerity; *Bombshell* buried fear beneath workplace polish; *Babylon* let her detonate across the screen. Even Harley Quinn’s cartoon anarchy comes with bruised psychology underneath. Robbie can exploit her movie-star image, mock it, and dismantle it—occasionally before the same scene has ended. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

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One minute, they are breaking hearts in an intimate drama; the next, they are stealing scenes as a supervillain, historical icon, or gloriously unhinged comic creation. The most versatile actresses do more than switch costumes and accents—they transform their voices, physicality, and entire screen presence. These 15 performers have turned unpredictability into a calling card, proving that “typecasting” is a word best kept out of their contracts.

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One minute, they are breaking hearts in an intimate drama; the next, they are stealing scenes as a supervillain, historical icon, or gloriously unhinged comic creation. The most versatile actresses do more than switch costumes and accents—they transform their voices, physicality, and entire screen presence. These 15 performers have turned unpredictability into a calling card, proving that “typecasting” is a word best kept out of their contracts.