10 Best Rachel Brosnahan Movies & TV Shows, Ranked

Witty and always prepared with a quip, Rachel Brosnahan has played a number of fierce, unconventional women over the course of her career. The Wisconsin-born actor made her film debut with the 2009 horror film "The Unborn," and since then, she's been a frequent face both in film and on television. Until recently, she's been best known for her Emmy-winning turn as Midge Maisel on "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," but to boil her down to just that is to ignore all of the great roles she'd had leading up to the Amazon Prime Video show that made her a star.

And of course, that doesn't include her recent foray into the world of superheroes in "Superman," where she played the indomitable Lois Lane to David Corenswet's Clark Kent. Rachel Brosnahan is a multi-faceted performer who's equally adept with comedy and drama (she's even starred in a few plays on Broadway), and in spite of all the great roles she's had in the past, it seems like her star is still on the ascent.

During the early 2010s, studios were scrambling to capitalize on the "Twilight" craze by churning out a ton of supernatural young adult fare — some more effective than others. "Beautiful Creatures" was largely maligned at the time of its release, but in the years since then, it has come to be regarded as not as bad as people originally thought. The story revolves around Lena (Alice Englert), a high school student who comes from a very unique family with an unusual heritage: They have witchcraft in their blood, and on their 16th birthday, their true nature will reveal itself as leaning either towards the dark or the light.

Rachel Brosnahan's role in the 2013 film isn't particularly large, but it is important to the narrative: She plays Lena's ancestor Genevieve, whose decision to use her powers to bring back her boyfriend from the dead during the U.S. Civil War resulted in a curse being placed on her entire female line. Appropriately spooky and grief-stricken, Brosnahan makes a strong impact early on in her career with limited screentime.

Normally, we'd say it's a waste of Rachel Brosnahan's talents to play the dead wife whose main job in the narrative is to provide motivation for her husband through her untimely death. And to be fair, that is very much her role in 2025's "The Amateur," which stars Rami Malek as a low-level CIA cryptographer who goes to considerable lengths to track down the men responsible for his wife Sarah's (Brosnahan) murder.

But unlike many other films with this trope, "The Amateur" does the smart thing in giving Sarah and Charlie (Malek) a decent amount of screentime together, making their relationship feel real for the audience and increasing the emotional impact of her death. How often have we seen a version of this film where the dead wife is shown only in gauzy, mist-filled flashbacks? When Brosnahan took on the role, she had several conversations with Malek about their on-screen marriage. In an interview with ScreenRant, she described Malek's take on the characters, saying, "He talked about how important the foundation of this relationship was, not only for the audience's buy-in to the film, but also for his emotional journey." Although the star of the show is undeniably Malek for his work as an ersatz action hero, Brosnahan succeeds in making her character memorable enough to justify the journey Charlie, described in /Film's review of the film as the "anti-James Bond," goes on throughout the reminder of the movie.

Although the legacy of "House of Cards" has been somewhat tainted by its star Kevin Spacey's string of legal troubles involving sexual assault and harrassment allegations (including a lawsuit involving Netflix itself), for several years it was one of the best shows that Netflix had to offer. A cynical political drama, it revolves around House Majority Whip (well, at least that's the position he has at the beginning of the show) Frank Underwood (played by Spacey), who is willing to do pretty much anything to feed his own ambition.

For the first three seasons, Rachel Brosnahan had a recurring role as Rachel Posner, a sex worker whose life gets entangled in the political machinations of Underwood and chief of staff Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly), with tragic consequences. Although she initially works with Underwood, agreeing to seduce another congressman so that Underwood will be able to maintain the upper hand, it's almost immediately clear that she's putting her trust in the wrong people. Brosnahan appeared in 19 episodes of "House of Cards" and was nominated for an Emmy for Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series in 2015.

In 2013, Boston was faced with an unimaginable tragedy when there was a bombing near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, sending the community into a tail spin as law enforcement officers tried to respond to the mayhem and track down the culprits at the same time. Three years later, Hollywood decided it had waited a respectable amount of time to dramatize the event and made "Patriots Day," itself adapted from the book "Boston Strong" (as written by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge). As you might expect, prominent Boston native Mark Wahlberg stars in "Patriots Day" as Boston Police Department Sergeant Tommy Saunders. (After his comments about what he believes would have happened if he was on board United 93 on 9/11, we can only imagine that Wahlberg wishes he was also on site for the Boston Marathon.)

Rachel Brosnahan, on the other hand, isn't playing one of the police officers working the case, but one of the bombing's real-life victims, Jessica Kensky. She and her husband Patrick (Christopher O'Shea) were spectators at the Boston Marathon caught up in the explosion, causing both of them to lose a leg. (Kensky later had her remaining leg amputated after being plagued by years of persistent pain.) Their role in the film emphasizes the human element of the terrorist attack, balancing out the police work that drives much of the rest of "Patriots Day."

The first English language production from acclaimed director Joachim Trier, 2015's "Louder Than Bombs" revolves around a dysfunctional family grieving the loss of its matriarch, Isabelle Reed (Isabelle Huppert), who died in a car accident three years before the events of the film. An exhibition of her work as a writer brings all of their feelings to the surface, and they respond to it in perhaps less-than-healthy ways — especially considering they haven't quite come to terms with the fact there's significant evidence indicating her death may have been a suicide.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Jonah, Isabelle's oldest son who is in denial about her death. When he crosses paths with his ex Erin (Rachel Brosnahan), he lies to her about his wife's non-existent cancer diagnosis, seemingly to earn sympathy, since her mother also has cancer — a ploy that works, as they end up sleeping together. This is a more emotionally complex and serious role than we're used to seeing from Brosnahan, and she knocks it out of the park.

You know that feeling when you're married and then all of a sudden your husband disappears and you learn that he's actually been in the mob all this time? It happens to the best of us. And that's exactly what happens to Jean (Rachel Brosnahan) in 2020's "I'm Your Woman." One minute, she's a happily married 1970s housewife, and then the next, she's on the run with her adopted son, attempting to keep a low profile until the heat dies down and she can ensure that whoever her husband got on the wrong side of isn't still looking for her.

A surprisingly quiet indie crime drama, "I'm Your Woman" focuses less on the action side of things and more on the ramifications of a life of crime and the ripple effects on a secret mobster's family. Although "I'm Your Woman" got buried during the COVID-19 epidemic and, as a result, has remained criminally under-seen (pun intended), it's a great starring turn for Brosnahan that allows her to stretch her acting muscles. While she's very much a woman forced to deal with and overcome the actions of men, it's also a powerful depiction of that same woman finding herself along the way. "You hear her so many times say that she doesn't know what she's doing, and she feels incapable," as Brosnahan once explained in an interview with The Independent, "and then frame by frame coming into her own power in a way that felt different from most films that I've seen, where that journey is sped up for the sake of drama."

Normally, the always delightful Benedict Cumberbatch takes on the roles of eccentric geniuses, but 2020's "The Courier" sees him playing fascinatingly against type. In it, he stars as Greville Wynne, a stodgy, middle-aged English businessman with work connections in Russia who is recruited for espionage because he's the last person on Earth who would be suspected of smuggling illicit documents between the U.S.S.R. and Britain. Although he initially doesn't have much of an instinct for the work, he quickly rises to the occasion, finding something in himself that relishes his new side occupation.

But for Wynne to tap into a better part of himself, he needs someone to put him on that path, and that's where Emily (Rachel Brosnahan) comes in. A CIA operative, she collaborates with a member of MI6 (Dickie, played by Angus Wright) to bring him into the fold, selling him on the idea by offering the chance to avert nuclear war. For Brosnahan, the role was interesting in that it allowed her to explore what it looked like to be a woman in the intelligence community. In a 2021 interview with Times of India, she explained, "I appreciated that Emily was a character who helped drive the action ... but [the director and writer] didn't overlook the unique challenges that she would face as a woman [at] the time. To get what she wants, Emily must appear non-threatening." An unsentimental figure who's willing to do what it takes to achieve her ends, Emily becomes one of the most important characters in "The Courier," which is one of the best Cold War movies we've seen in a long time.

Years before Rachel Brosnahan took on a Manhattan-based role that would make her famous (more on that later), she starred in a gripping but short-lived historical series about the Manhattan Project, titled simply "Manhattan." Set in Los Alamos in the midst of World War II, it follows a group of scientists and other personnel who move to the desert in the top-secret pursuit of the atom bomb that they believe will win them the war. 

In it, Brosnahan plays Abby Isaacs, the wife of Charlie (Ashey Zukerman), a promising young scientist who has been recruited to work on the project. Although she's initially willing — albeit not eager — to uproot her life for the strange isolation of the community in New Mexico that sprang up around the hush-hush research project, it doesn't take long for her to become discontented in her new home and to seek an outlet for her dissatisfaction. "Manhattan" ran for two seasons on WGN America from 2014 to 2015, serving as one of the network's first scripted shows, after which it was canceled due to low ratings.

When you think of Superman, the intrepid Lois Lane is the first other character to come to mind. A journalist for the Daily Planet, Lois has been featured right alongside the superhero since his first inception in the 1930s. And in James Gunn's 2025 movie "Superman," she's played by none other than Rachel Brosnahan. In Brosnahan's capable and slightly acerbic hands, the focus is heavy on her work as a journalist. Although she and Clark (David Corenswet) have been dating in secret for several months, their most important scene doesn't involve them talking about their relationship, but rather focuses on a hard-hitting interview between Lois and Superman in which she questions many of his recent actions — emphasizing the importance of journalism, which James Gunn considered to be a key element of the film. 

The chemistry between Brosnahan and Corenswet went a long way in selling the more domestic, human side of Superman's life, giving audiences a nice balance with the more traditional superhero action fare. "Superman" has been an unmitigated success for DC Studios, netting over half a billion dollars at the box office and setting the stage for James Gunn's new DC film universe.

This is it: The show that put Rachel Brosnahan on the map. In a tour-de-force performance, Brosnahan plays Midge Maisel, a witty Jewish housewife on the Upper West Side in the late 1950s whose life is turned upside down when she discovers that her husband Joel (Michael Zegen) is having an affair with a much younger woman. Devastated and more than a little drunk, she heads to a comedy club in the Village and delivers an impromptu stand-up routine that attracts the attention of club manager Susie (Alex Borstein).

From there, the spitfire develops an unlikely career as a comedian, one that grows more and more high-profile as the seasons go on. But more importantly, she finds a sense of fulfillment in the work, even though it's pretty much the exact opposite of what she was raised to want. It's difficult to imagine someone better suited for the role of Midge than Brosnahan, who fully embodies the character. "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" ran for five seasons on Prime Video, becoming one of the streamer's best comedy shows and earning an incredible 23 Emmys over the course of its time on the air. Brosnahan herself was nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for every season of the show and took home the award in 2018.