14 Best Michelle Williams Movies, Ranked

Michelle Williams always delivers grounded, deeply moving performances but is rarely showy about it. Her work with frequent collaborator Kelly Reichardt — including "Wendy and Lucy" and "Showing Up" — best illustrates this quiet brilliance. Reichardt makes minimalist, unhurried films that demand both precision and flexibility from her actors.

In addition to her films with independent directors like Reichardt, Williams also delivers exemplary turns in bigger films, which pair her king with legendary directors like Martin Scorses and Steven Spielberg. Her roles in Reichardt's "Certain Women" and Spielberg's "The Fabelmans" couldn't be more different, but her simultaneous sense of grace and familiarity are common threads. Even in her most theatrical performances -– notably "The Fabelmans" -– Williams always feels like a woman you could really know or someone you might see on the street.

Despite her status as a five-time Oscars nominee, Williams seems to somehow still fly under the radar, perhaps in part because she doesn't bring a movie-star persona to any of her roles — and that's a compliment. In celebration of her big-screen output to date, here are Michelle Williams' 14 best movies, ranked.

While far from Todd Haynes' most well-regarded film, "Wonderstruck" definitely merits digging into. The film tracks two different timelines, switching between them throughout. The first takes place in 1927 and centers on Rose, (Millicent Simmonds), a young girl in search of a mysterious actress named Lillian Mayhew (Julianne Moore). The second timeline unfolds in 1977 and puts the focus on Ben (Oakes Fegley), an orphan boy who runs away from home in order to find his father. Williams plays his recently deceased mother. Both children are deaf, and Rose's story is told entirely without dialogue as a means to reflect her reality.

The film is as visually sumptuous as we've come to expect from Haynes and finds him once again working with frequent collaborators, including cinematographer Ed Lachman, costume designer Sandy Powell, production designer Mark Friedberg, and composer Carter Brunwell. Simmonds –- who found major fame with "A Quiet Place" and will play Helen Keller in an upcoming biopic –- shines as Rose, and Williams gives a typically great performance as Ben's quiet, somewhat distant mother. The transition between the two timelines jars here and there, especially because their visual languages are so different, but overall it's a moving story and a deeply faithful adaptation of ​​Brian Selznick's eponymous novel.

"The Station Agent," a relatively quiet film, speaks volumes about human companionship. Peter Dinklage plays Fin, an antisocial man whose only real interest is trains. When he inherits an old train depot from his boss, he moves there in hopes of a life of solitude. Instead, new neighbors — the talkative Joe (Bobby Cannavale) and the grieving Olivia (Patricia Clarkson) — rudely interrupt his quiet. He also encounters a young girl named Cleo (Raven Goodwin) who shares his interest in trains, and the local librarian, Emily (Williams).

An exceedingly naturalistic exploration of the nature of connection then unfolds, as Fin finds it difficult to change his curmudgeonly ways but his new friends force him out of his shell. At the same time, Fin learns that no one around him has figured life out, either, but that it's best not to go it alone. "The Station Agent" feels like it easily could have been a play, rather than a film, but the performances are all so strong it doesn't matter what form the story takes. The only downside? Williams' love interest character is somewhat underwritten, especially compared to the three main characters, who are drawn with a lot of care. Per usual, though, Williams manages to do a lot with very little.

Williams has worked with some of our most visionary directors, including the great Martin Scorsese. In "Shutter Island," Leonardo DiCaprio plays U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, who travels to a mental hospital for the criminally insane alongside his partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo). They've been sent to investigate the disappearance of a patient who looks to have vanished from a locked room. But as Teddy gets deeper into the perplexing case, he begins to suspect that not everything is as it seems. And what happened to Teddy's wife (Williams) and kids?

"Shutter Island" may not be on par with Scorsese's best works, but it's a highly entertaining if occasionally silly thriller with a masterful third-act twist that will leave your jaw on the floor. DiCaprio's performance is as fascinating as we've come to expect from the actor, and his old-school Boston accent delights. Williams breaks hearts as Teddy's overwhelmed wife, who has long suffered from mental illness without any respite. Her character embodies numerous classic (and probably overdone) movie tropes, but it's difficult not to empathize with her with Williams in the driver's seat. 

Williams has teamed up with Kelly Reichardt more than any other filmmaker, and it makes sense, as the director's austere style and Williams' down-to-Earth approach mesh beautifully. "Meek's Cutoff" marked Williams' second film with Reichardt, and it follows a group of settlers traveling on the Oregon Trail in the 1840s. Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), a guide who is probably less knowledgeable than he should be, leads the group. The settlers must decide whether or not to continue trusting Meek, and one of the wives (Williams) makes an unlikely alliance with a Native American (Rod Rondeaux) who is captured.

Like most of Reichardt's films, "Meek's Cutoff" moves at a very measured pace. Despite the lack of action, the movie ratchets up the tension and a pervading sense of dread keeps the viewer engaged. Far from romancing frontier life or Western imagery, Reichardt's take on the genre exposes the very shaky foundation on which these American myths are built. Williams' performance is just as much of a slow burn as the film. She initially appears as a docile, unassuming woman, but when things start to go south, she reveals an inner strength and determination that no one else in the group can match. 

One of Williams' most emotionally devastating films, "Blue Valentine" sees her, as Cindy, embarking on a tumultuous relationship with Ryan Gosling's character, Dean. A young couple who fall madly in love, Cindy and Dean get married and move to the suburbs, but life gets in the way and things start to deteriorate.

While not an overly melodramatic tale, "Blue Valentine" is profoundly sad. Both characters spend much of the film struggling to achieve any sort of peace or happiness and almost always land short of that goal. It can be a difficult watch at times, but Williams and Gosling deliver exceedingly powerful performances that demand your attention. On the one hand, it's a rather cynical look at relationships that might have you thinking that true love doesn't exist. But, at the same time, it's a painfully honest depiction of human fallibility and the ugly truth of how much we can hurt one another. Whichever way you spin it, "Blue Valentine" packs an emotional gut punch and makes great use of its lead actors.

"Manchester by the Sea" explores grief, regret, and loneliness, three topics Williams has often found herself intimately engaged with. Kenneth Lonergan trains his camera on Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), who finds himself the sole guardian of his teenage nephew (Lucas Hedges) after the death of his older brother (Kyle Chandler). He moves from Boston back to his hometown of Manchester-by-the-Sea, a small fishing village. While struggling to reckon with his own sadness and that of his nephew, Lee also must face the people he left behind, including his ex-wife, Randi (Williams).

Given the focus on the ravages of grief, "Manchester by the Sea" is far from an easy watch. The characters are in so much pain, and it radiates off them in nearly every scene. Lee in particular is a broken man, and Affleck fully embodies him with all his ragged edges. Lucas Hedges is equally brilliant as Lee's anguished and angry nephew, and they play off each other beautifully. The film wouldn't be complete without Williams, who is just as broken as Lee but has clearly been forcing herself to hold it together. The main reason "Manchester by the Sea" doesn't top the list? It's more Affleck's film than Williams', which doesn't diminish her contributions.

Williams has received many honors in her career, but few have been as meaningful as Steven Spielberg hand-picking her to play his mother in "The Fabelmans." Based on his own childhood and young adult life, Spielberg's most personal movie yet pays moving tribute to family and the passions -– and pitfalls -– of a life filled with art. Williams plays Mitzi, a fictionalized version of Spielberg's beloved mom. A talented pianist who gave up on her dream of becoming a professional musician to raise a family, Mitzi is a kindhearted but often mercurial figure who harbors her own secret dreams and desires. Her movie-obsessed son Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle) starts making films from a young age, with the full support of his very proud mother.

"The Fabelmans" is about a young artist coming into his own artistic perspective, but it is also a story about a son and mother. Though technically a secondary character in Sammy's (admittedly self-constructed) narrative, Mitzi is the most central figure in his life, and in Williams' hands, she is electric and alive on the screen, and also far from perfect. When Sammy learns one of her biggest secrets, it nearly severs their relationship.

On the surface, "The Fabelmans" might seem like a simple, easy-to-digest coming-of-age story. But upon further inspection, it is a complex, knotty fiction about the falsity of memory and how art can destroy as much as it can create. Williams is the heart of this moving story, and it's her best project to date.