Comedy actors tend to go under-appreciated for much of their careers, with examples like the aforementioned Bill Murray springing to mind, and female comedic actors probably even more so than their male counterparts. So at that rate, I suspect Leslie Mann will receive the recognition she deserves 25 years from now or so.
I’m not going to make a case for sexist motives or ageist prejudice or whatever it might be, but in my view, Leslie Mann is far more deserving of the attention and quality of roles currently going to a guy like Jonah Hill, of whose work I am a massive fan. Mann, though, is such an anomaly, a performer able to shift seamlessly between comedy and self-pitying sadness, with seemingly no effort required. The only other person I’m aware of that can do this with such ease is Kristen Wiig, but Mann pulls it off with far more naturalism, more in the manner of a person you’d hang around with than the odder characters Wiig tends to take on.
One can’t help but believe Leslie Mann’s prime is yet to come. I also suspect that husband Judd Apatow’s recent championing of women’s stories, from Wiig to Melissa McCarthy to Lena Dunham, owes a great deal of credit to Mann’s partnership, an insistence on equality that she’s brought to each role in the past few years.
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