Toni Collette is one of the finest character actresses working anywhere in the world, an Australian performer whose willingness to disappear completely into a role has produced some of the most startling screen performances of the last three decades. She announced herself with Muriel’s Wedding (1994), earned an Oscar nomination for The Sixth Sense (1999), and built a filmography that includes About a Boy (2002), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Hereditary (2018), and Knives Out (2019). The through line across all of it is a fearlessness that makes each performance feel like she has nothing left to protect.

On screen, Collette operates through a physical and emotional openness that most actors spend their entire careers trying to access, transforming her face, body, and voice so completely that the technical work vanishes inside the performance. Her features are expressive in a way that registers across wildly different registers, from broad Australian comedy to the kind of grief-soaked horror that Hereditary demanded of her in what may be the most underrecognized lead performance of the last decade.