Emmy Rossum's 10 Best Movies And TV Shows

Emmy Rossum did not get her start in movies, but in music, but music paved the way for an impressive acting career and these roles in her best movies and TV shows. Rossum was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus as a child. Her regular performances with the group only served to increase her interest in acting and encourage her to take acting classes.

Rossum’s earliest roles include guest starring spots in projects filmed in New York like Law And Order as well as roles in Disney Channel Original Movies. Rossum was able to transition from roles as a child to those as an adult fairly easily. While there might have been some missteps, like the live-action Dragonball Z adaptation, she has maintained a relatively steady career in the entertainment industry since she first debuted. Her career spans albums, television series, and movies with a great degree of success.

10 The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

As Laura

Though Rossum had been acting since the late 1990s, 2004 should be considered her breakout year. She had two very big and very different movies released that year, and they are both among her best. One of them is The Day After Tomorrow, a thriller about climate change.

In the movie, a scientist tries to get politicians to understand that the world is in danger of succumbing to another ice age if human beings do not roll back their damage to the environment. Rossum’s character is a student on a field trip for a competition with the scientist’s son. As rapid climate change begins to occur, her character is stranded in the New York Public Library with a group as the world begins to freeze.

Rossum’s character is smart and strong, understanding the changes as they occur and wanting to help those around them. She also ends up as the movie’s typical damsel-in-distress for an action flick as a simple cut on her leg becomes septic while stranded. Her character hits a lot of action movie tropes, but Rossum plays her authentically.

Though the science of the movie is criticized for compressing climate events that would take place over centuries into mere hours, the movie did open a dialogue about climate change and helped to get people more interested in environmental protection. The Day After Tomorrow was also nominated for various special and visual effects awards at different ceremonies.

9 Beautiful Creatures (2013)

As Ridley

Beautiful Creatures was not the best-reviewed movie when it premiered in 2013, so it might be surprising to see it among Rossum’s best projects. It is, however, an impressive look at Rossum’s abilities as an actor.

Beautiful Creatures is inspired by a young adult novel of the same name. A Southern Gothic story, it takes a teen love story in the Deep South and adds a family of “casters” or magic-users and a curse to the mix. Emmy Rossum plays one of the family members, but she happens to be from the darker side of the family, someone wielding darker magic and trying to urge her young cousin to the side of the dark as well.

Up until this point in her career, Rossum had mostly played girl-next-door types. Ridley is more of a villain (though not truly evil) than any of the other characters she had played to that point. Rossum is clearly having fun in the role, scenery-chewing with the best of them in a movie that otherwise moves very slowly.

8 Comet (2014)

As Kimberly

Comet is an unusual addition to Rossum’s resume. It’s a more genre-heavy movie than most of her projects. It is also, however, a love story.

Comet tracks the relationship between Dell (Justin Long) and Kimberly (Rossum) over the course of several years. The story is also told out of timeline order though, flashing backward and forward to different parts of their relationship. The movie also takes the route of showing the pairing in different universes, opening up their love story to the multiverse and the possibilities that exist.

While the timeline can be difficult to follow, Rossum and Long have fantastic chemistry. Their interactions with one another, even as he’s a pessimist worrying about everything, and she is living in the moment, really sell the movie’s love story. It’s easy to root for them.

Comet is written and directed by Rossum’s now husband, Sam Esmail. It marked his directorial debut.

7 A Futile And Stupid Gesture (2018)

As Kathryn Walker

A Futile And Stupid Gesture is one of a handful of projects in Rossum’s repertoire in which she takes on the role of a real person. She plays actor Kathryn Walker during the time that Walker was dating writer Douglas Kenney.

The movie tracks the rise and fall of the National Lampoon brand. It begins with Kenney and Henry Beard at Harvard in the 1960s and tracks the duo as they develop National Lampoon as a magazine, then a radio program, and how it becomes the format for films. It also tracks the duo as they go their separate ways and Kenney ultimately succumbs to his addiction.

Rossum’s role in the movie is not a large one. She is a supporting player among a truly impressive cast. Most of the cast are known for their comedic abilities and have likely been inspired in the careers by the very people they are playing. While the movie received mixed reviews, the performances were not faulted, and it certainly stands out as unique among Rossum’s movie roles.

6 The Phantom Of The Opera (2004)

As Christine

Other than The Day After Tomorrow, The Phantom of the Opera is Rossum’s other big release of 2004. The adaptation of the Broadway musical was huge news for fans of the genre. Though it was divisive with critics, it helped propel Rossum into the spotlight.

The movie adapts the musical, which adapts the novel. In it, a masked phantom “haunts” an opera house and has an obsession with one of the young singers. Rossum plays the young singer.

The movie is not necessarily the best showcase of the acting abilities of all involved, but it is impeccably costumed, designed, and choreographed. It offers a huge spectacle that musical fans will appreciate. Rossum gets to give a more dramatic performance here, and an operatic voice performance that many outside of the Metropolitan Opera audience might not have known she had in her.

Rossum was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in the movie.

5 Mystic River (2003)

As Katie

Mystic River is one of the most lauded of Emmy Rossum’s movies. Rossum’s role in the movie, however, is not a large one. The movie belongs more to the adult actors that are the principal players in the ensemble instead, but it still deserves a spot among her best because of how well-crafted the movie is.

Mystic River, inspired by the 2001 novel, is a dark crime thriller. Initially, it centers on three men who grew up together and followed very different paths in their same small town. One of them is still haunted after he was abducted and assaulted as a child before he managed to escape. When the daughter of one of his friends ends up murdered decades later, he ends up being suspected by his friend because he has trouble accounting for his whereabouts that night. The tragedy ends up being even darker than expected though.

Rossum’s character is the one to kick off the mystery and most of the events in the movie, but Rossum does not actually get to play a huge role in the movie. For that reason, she has a few other projects that rank higher.

Mystic River was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning two. It was also nominated for five Golden Globes, winning two.

4 Dare (2009)

As Alexa

Dare

Cast

Emmy Rossum
Zach Gilford
Ashley Springer
Ana Gasteyer

Release Date: November 13, 2009
Runtime: 100 minutes
Director: Adam Salky

Dare is the feature-length version of a short film that writer David Brind and director Adam Salky created in college. While a sequel to the original short film was also crowdfunded and produced in 2017, the movie stands alone.

Dare has been compared to both Cruel Intentions and John Hughes teen movies of the 1980s. It centers on a trio of teenagers who are very different from one another, but whose lives collide in a flurry of teenage drama and a love triangle. Emmy Rossum’s Alexa anchors that love triangle.

While the movie received mixed reviews from critics, it did well on the film festival circuit. Rossum even won the Young Hollywood Award at the Savannah Film Festival for her role in the movie. She was also named “compelling” and “delightful” in the movie by The Hollywood Reporter.

3 Songcatcher (2000)

As Deladis Slocumb

...a great movie to bring Rossum into the bigger world of movies when coming from TV projects.

Though Rossum had been in several TV projects in the 1990s, Songcatcher marks her film debut. Even though it was her first big movie, it is still worthy of being included among Rossum’s best movies.

Songcatcher follows a woman in the early 1900s who is a musicologist who is denied a promotion where she teaches, so she decides to visit her sister, who works at a rural school in Appalachia. There, she is fascinated by the traditional songs that have been preserved and passed down among residents, and she begins attempting to record and preserve them professionally. Tragic events cut her gathering of music short though, and she ends up having to move on with her life.

Rossum stars as one of the students at the rural school. She also happens to be an orphan with a lovely voice, so she accompanies the woman and helps to preserve the traditional music of the region. Rossum is also featured on the movie’s soundtrack.

It’s a great movie to bring Rossum into the bigger world of movies when coming from TV projects. The independent project was made for less than $2 million and barely made its money back at the box office, but it was a creative triumph that offered movie audiences a glimpse at something they might otherwise have missed out on. It also gave several country singers the chance to sing some traditional tracks instead of the modern country-pop that was blowing up at the time.

Rossum was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance.

2 Angelyne (2022)

As Angelyne

Rossum is completely transformed to play the mysterious entity and the real woman behind her in a great examination of fame and what it takes to achieve it.

After leaving the TV series Shameless in 2019, Rossum mostly worked behind the scenes, directing episodes of television series and taking on smaller roles in ensembles. Angelyne was her first starring role since working on Shameless.

The series is a much more glamorous role for Rossum. It features a journalist investigating the identity of the mysterious model Angelyne who rose to prominence after she appeared on billboards overnight in the 1980s. The series sees the journalist dig into who Angelyne is and just how much of what they learn about her is true.

Angelyne is an interesting project for Rossum because it allows her to mostly play an enigma. Much of the information learned about Angelyne in one scene is contradicted in another. Rossum is completely transformed to play the mysterious entity and the real woman behind her in a great examination of fame and what it takes to achieve it.

Angelyne was nominated for three Emmys.

1 Shameless (2011-2019)

As Fiona

Shameless is the TV show that Emmy Rossum is best known for today. It will likely remain one of the roles she is best known for in many years as well.

The series is an adaptation of a British series of the same name. It follows the Gallagher family as they deal with an absent mother, an alcoholic father, and nearly every single child in the family finds themselves in trouble on a regular basis. Rossum stars as Fiona, the eldest sister of the family who spends most of her time in the series simply trying to hold the family together.

Rossum gets the chance to play in the world of teen drama, addiction, love stories, and more in Shameless. Rossum’s legacy in the TV world is cemented by the fact that during her time on the show she fought for equal pay with series star William H. Macy, since the two of them co-lead the series with an ensemble of children for most of the run. Rossum also got the chance to direct episodes of the show before she left it.

Shameless is undoubtedly Emmy Rossum’s best TV show so far.

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