Amanda Seyfried’s era is now

Amanda Seyfried shares her experience of working with Tom Holland on Apple TV+’s ‘The Crowded Room’ and getting into the skin of what is her most complex character till date

For years, Amanda Seyfried made it to pretty much every list of Hollywood’s most gorgeous women, and essays were written about her green eyes and stunning smile. 

Then in 2020, something happened which would then change the trajectory of her career forever. David Fincher decided that the Pennsylvania native — until then, best known for a series of flowerpot roles in romances and comedies — could act. 

Amanda was cast as actress Marion Davies in Mank, Fincher’s biopic on Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz; the film earned ten nominations at the 93rd Academy Awards, including a Best Supporting Actress nod for Amanda.

Last year, it got even better; she knocked it out of the park as playing Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of disgraced biotechnology company Theranos, in the Hulu mini-series The Dropout. The show opened to global acclaim and awards season came calling again. This time Amanda did not miss; she won Best Actress at both the Emmys and the Golden Globes, and was named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people of 2022.

It only took her 20 years since Amanda first debuted in her still-iconic role of Karen Smith in Mean Girls, but now the 37-year-old has truly arrived as one of the finest actors of her generation. There were occasional glimpses of her talent even earlier in the silliest of scripts (Letters to Juliet, Mamma Mia!, Dear John, and the cult classic horror-comedy Jennifer’s Body) but Hollywood is finally taking her seriously, as is evident with her latest show for Apple, The Crowded Room.

Created by Academy Award-winning writer Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind), the series sees Amanda star as Rya Goodwin, an empathetic professor of psychology who is brought in to interrogate Dany Sullivan (Tom Holland), a man who has been arrested after a shooting in New York City in 1979. From the onset, Rya begins to suspect that there is more to Danny’s case than meets the eye, and goes down a rabbit hole to tap into his past memories, with far-reaching ramifications.

Next up, she will reunite with Chloe filmmaker Atom Egoyan for Seven Veils, in which she plays a theater director who’s been given the daunting task of remounting her former mentor’s most famous work, the opera Salome.