Sarah Paulson’s five favourite movies
Sarah Paulson is one of the finest scream queens around at the moment. A favoured actor of powerhouse director Ryan Murphy, she’s shot to notoriety through her many collaborations with him. No one does gothic quite like her.
Appearing in nine seasons of American Horror Story and playing multiple iconic characters like season two’s protagonist Lana Winters or the cult leader Cordelia Foxx, her contributions earned her five Emmy nominations over the years. She also starred in Murphy’s spin-off, American Crime Story, and his other projects, Feud and Rached.
But outside of her collaborations with Murphy, her resume is broad and includes some of the most beloved and acclaimed works of recent years. She starred in the Steve McQueen epic 12 Years A Slave, as well as LGBTQ+ cult favourite Carol.
Mastering everything from horror to humour, drama to disaster movies, Paulson has done it all. When revealing her favourite movies, her own tastes seem just as eclectic.
One of her picks comes in the form of Carrie Fisher’s semi-autobiographical movie, Postcards From The Edge. Starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine, it’s a dry humour take on a strained mother-daughter relationship. “I think it’s always incredibly difficult to thread that needle between real pathos and comedy. And I think Postcards dances on that knife’s edge, not to go overboard with the metaphors, but it’s just so beautifully calibrated,” Paulson said. While she never got to work with Fisher, her time on American Horror Story saw her work closely with her daughter, Billie Lourd.
Another pick also features a co-star. “Frances, starring Jessica Lange, is one of those movies that, for me, was quite connected to my wanting to be an actor,” she said. Paulson and Lange have worked together extensively, first on Broadway in The Glass Menagerie and then again on American Horror Story. Of this 1982 movie, she remembers watching it and thinking, “‘Oh, if that’s what acting is, I want to do that.’”
A lot of Paulson’s favourite films connect to her desire to become not just an actor, but the best possible actor she could be. When choosing Sense and Sensibility as a pick, it’s less for the story and more for the ambition it alighted in her. “So many times it’s about how the performance affects me, in terms of what I ended up taking away from it all,” she said, adding, “just dreaming and wishing and hoping that someday I could do work of that calibre.”
Her final two choices reveal Paulson to be simply a major movie fan. Of La Mome, the Edith Piaf biopic, she remembers the cinema experience most. “I remember it was showing in New York City, and I walk over with my friend [to the theater] sort of not knowing what I’m about to see, which is always kind of my favorite thing,” she said. “The combination of all the beautiful and tragic things you learn about someone who is so gifted, and then also to see it portrayed by someone equally as gifted and once again be transported into a world you knew nothing about – that’s really the power of the movie.”
The same goes for the 1977 flick Opening Night. Connecting to her life as an actor and her role within filmmaking, the movie seems to appear as an ode to effort. “[I’m] really drawn to the way those movies were made,” she said. “You can kind of feel the hammer and nail that was used to bring the whole thing together in this way that’s sort of extraordinary and that you can just almost feel the effort made by everyone involved – which is what happens when you make any movie.”
Sarah Paulson’s five favourite movies:
- Postcards From The Edge (1987)
- Frances (1982)
- Sense and Sensibility (1995)
- La Mome (or La Vie En Rose) (2007)
- Opening Night (1977)
