It’s no secret that Elizabeth Olsen has skyrocketed to fame with her role as Wanda Maximoff in the MCU. However, long before she became the Scarlet Witch, Olsen has established herself as a formidable actress in multiple independent projects. Following her studies at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Olsen landed her breakout role in the haunting film, Martha Marcy May Marlene. With her success in smaller more independent films, Olsen has proved she can hold her own in both the limelight of movies like Godzilla and the nuanced setting of smaller more intimate roles.
Olsen is set to star as the lead, Candy Montgomery, in the new HBO crime/drama miniseries Love and Death, which follows the real-life murder of Betty Gore. With a filmography full of outstanding performances, and the soon addition of the anticipated Love and Death, now is a great time to explore some of Olsen’s more underrated yet powerful performances.
8’Kill Your Darlings’ (2013)
Allen (Daniel Radcliffe) finds himself drawn to rebellious colleagues like Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) and his friends, after becoming dissatisfied with his school’s traditional values. As the future Beat Generation, this group would pursue daring new literary ideas that would shock the existing ideas of their time. Despite their inventiveness, their cravings and decisions result in more severe crimes that permanently alter their lives.
Although Olsen’s role as Edie Parker is a smaller one in the grand scale of the film, her performance is one that competes if not surpasses that of Harry Potter himself. Though audiences won’t get as much of Olsen as they’d like, Kill Your Darlings is still on this list purely because the film itself is beautifully shocking.
7’Very Good Girls’ (2013)
Two best friends, Lilly (Dakota Fanning) and Gerri (Olsen) have the chance to leave their good girl stereotypes behind the summer before college. Both girls desire to discover the other side of who they are and lose their virginity. However, the introduction of a bad boy, together with their different yet grim home lives, threatens to shatter their friendship and ruin the two girls’ imagined enjoyable coming-of-age summer.
With Olsen playing the more adventurous one out of the two friends, we see a side of Olsen’s acting that is purely teenage fun in a coming-of-age story. There are many films that do the “let’s lose our virginity” topic. Those others films tend to be comedic in a way, but Very Good Girls is more realistic in the way that it shows just how hard it is to find someone you can trust.
6’Ingird Goes West’ (2017)
Social media stalker Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) is unhinged and has a history of mistaking “likes” for genuine connections. The latest fixation of Ingrid is the impeccably curated, Taylor Sloane (Olsen), whose boho-chic lifestyle of Instagram “influencer” draws Ingrid in. When Ingrid moves to Los Angeles and succeeds in slipping into the life of the social media celebrity, their friendship swiftly descends to #WTF.
Olsen’s role as an Instagram influencer is eerily convincing especially when taking into consideration that Olsen did her fair share of cyberstalking to get the role perfect. Given that it’s almost unbelievable that Olsen had no prior experience with a role like this because she sure made it seem natural.
5’Oldboy’ (2013)
In this remake of Park Chan-wook’s 2003 South Korean film of the same name, Oldboy follows the story of a man who is taken hostage and kept in seclusion for 20 years. After being mysteriously set free, he sets out on a quest of obsession to find out who ordered his punishment, only to discover that he is still entangled in a web of deceit and suffering.
Olsen stars alongside her eventual enemy in the MCU, Josh Brolin, and with the director of S.H.I.E.L.D Samuel L. Jackson in this dark and twisted thriller. Olsen’s character Marie provides a surprisingly warm and emotional center to the movie’s ever-increasing suspense. The twist at the end of the film is one that won’t soon leave the audience’s minds and Olsen’s part in the revelation is shocking.
4’In Secret’ (2013)
In Secret, also known as Thérèse, is based on the book Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola. In order to be with her lover Laurent (Oscar Isaac), Thérèse Raquin (Olsen), a 𝑠e𝑥ually repressed young woman stuck in a loveless marriage to her cousin Camille (Tom Felton), conspires with Laurent to murder Camille.
Playing the title character, Olsen brings a vulnerable depth to the story of a woman unsatisfied with a life she never wanted, and contrastingly, Olsen brings savagery to the act of getting what she wants. In Secret is a beautiful period drama that explores how far one will go for love, and whether that love was in fact worth it at all.
3’Silent House’ (2011)
One of Olsen’s earliest movies, Silent House, is a remake of the Uruguayan movie La Casa Muda. The movie follows Sarah (Olsen), who is helping her dad, John, and uncle, Peter in restoring their old Victorian holiday home in the hopes that they can sell it. Suddenly Sarah becomes trapped within the house unable to contact the outside world. As her sanity starts to slip, Sarah begins to go through a number of unusual incidents that border on the supernatural.
Olsen’s performance in this horror flick is so enticing and real that she grabs the audience and traps them in the house alongside her. Silent House is a horror that prides itself in not throwing intense amounts of blood and gore your way. Instead, the film presents something much more creepy and unpredictable.
2’Sorry For Your Loss’ (2018 – 2019)
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Olsen plays Leigh Shaw, a young widow trying to rebuild her life following her husband’s untimely passing. The show explores grief as a necessary, universal, and transformational element of life. Leigh’s journey illustrates that mourning is an integral part of human life rather than something to passively tolerate, medicate away, or “muscle through.”
Olsen has proved time and time again that she has in-depth knowledge and experience in playing characters that are dealing with grief as we can see with Wanda Maximoff. Olsen aptly depicts what grief can do to the human mind. With her delicate yet impactful approach, Olsen successfully creates a character to which many people can relate.
1’Wind River’ (2017)
In the murder mystery Wind River, Olsen once more teamed up with one of her Marvel Cinematic Universe co-stars, Jeremy Renner. The plot concentrates on the underreported societal issue of Indigenous women being repeatedly abducted and subjected to 𝑠e𝑥ual assault. To solve a murder on the reserve, Cory Lambert (Renner), a wildlife tracker and Jane Banner (Olsen), a rookie FBI agent team up.
Wind River presents a grippy and emotional suspense thriller that tastefully takes on the issues of injustice towards the Native American culture within the justice system. Olsen and Renner have an on-screen chemistry that rolls off-screen making audiences root for their characters. Olsen did wonders at bringing her character to life, an FBI rookie that is navigating her first case with an innocence about her but will also a wondrous survival instinct and thirst for justice.
