Rosalind Eleazar Gives One of the Year’s Best Performances in the Acerbic and Tender ‘Misty Green’

Eleazar, best known for her role in Slow Horses, knows just how to shape this character without ever softening her. Misty is gifted, arrogant, impossible; at times, you begin to wonder if she even deserves a break. But Eleazar, giving one of the best performances of the year, tears our expectations to shreds: Who are we to decide what she deserves? At one point, during an audition, one of the men in charge of potentially hiring her blurts out, “Are you mixed?” and her eyes, moments ago dancing with fire, become glacier cold.

Misty has made her way along a path paved with irrelevant, if not outright racist and sexist, questions and assumptions—it’s little wonder she can barely take any more. But even stronger than her resentment is her belief that she still has something to give. It may be a stereotype to characterize actors as needy people, but Eleazar captures an almost existential longing that goes beyond garden-variety neediness. And at her lowest moment, Misty’s desperation becomes nearly unbearable to watch. Eleazar brings us right to the knifepoint of her degradation, and it pierces us too.