{"id":162362,"date":"2026-02-20T09:30:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=162362"},"modified":"2026-02-19T09:33:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:33:30","slug":"lili-taylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=162362","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;I also like to play roles where the women are a little crazy. I just have a feel for crazy people.&#8221; &#8211; Lili Taylor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/https-bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-public-images-75200fca-da32-467d-b6f0-51d0f07f9df5_500x245.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"245\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-165630\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\n<big>&#8220;If someone puts up $100 million on a movie, they&#8217;re gonna be concerned about whether they&#8217;ll get it back. So they&#8217;re not gonna make a movie about three girls, you know?&#8221; &#8212; Lili Taylor<\/big><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s her birthday today. <\/p>\n<p>Like most of my generation, Lili Taylor first made an impression on me in <i>Mystic Pizza<\/i>. She&#8217;s basically the third lead, and she&#8217;s great throughout, but her monologue at the end &#8211; if you&#8217;ve seen the movie, you will know what I&#8217;m talking about &#8211; is when I was like, &#8220;Oh my God she is GREAT.&#8221; She basically steals the whole film. Fan for life from that day forward. A Gen-X avatar, although I would never have put it that way at the time. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Joe lies &#8230; when he cries &#8230;&#8221; is a classic of American cinema. <\/p>\n<p>Her &#8220;turn&#8221; on <i>Six Feet Under<\/i> HAUNTS me. It&#8217;s so messed up, so upsetting, so perfectly done. The character shows up and Nate thinks he can be another kind of person &#8211; a good person, a responsible person &#8211; if he marries her. Naturally, this does not go well. But then &#8230; things go even further south. <\/p>\n<p>\n<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/MV5BMzQ3ZDg3ZmYtZTc0MC00ZmFiLWFhMzgtOWE0MjBhNjZlNjNlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTgyNDM1OTU@._V1_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"979\" height=\"551\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-166034\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/MV5BMzQ3ZDg3ZmYtZTc0MC00ZmFiLWFhMzgtOWE0MjBhNjZlNjNlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTgyNDM1OTU@._V1_.jpg 979w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/MV5BMzQ3ZDg3ZmYtZTc0MC00ZmFiLWFhMzgtOWE0MjBhNjZlNjNlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTgyNDM1OTU@._V1_-200x113.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/MV5BMzQ3ZDg3ZmYtZTc0MC00ZmFiLWFhMzgtOWE0MjBhNjZlNjNlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTgyNDM1OTU@._V1_-400x225.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/MV5BMzQ3ZDg3ZmYtZTc0MC00ZmFiLWFhMzgtOWE0MjBhNjZlNjNlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTgyNDM1OTU@._V1_-100x56.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/MV5BMzQ3ZDg3ZmYtZTc0MC00ZmFiLWFhMzgtOWE0MjBhNjZlNjNlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTgyNDM1OTU@._V1_-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 979px) 100vw, 979px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nThe &#8220;fate of Lisa&#8221; haunts the rest of the series, and that is due, in large part, to Lili Taylor&#8217;s performance, her misery, her heartbreak, her love &#8211; love that Nate doesn&#8217;t feel and doesn&#8217;t want. It&#8217;s so so good. <\/p>\n<p>Here are two pieces I&#8217;ve written that deal with Lili Taylor specifically: <\/p>\n<p>\n<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/CircularInsignificantJumpingbean-small.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"435\" height=\"250\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-165632\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nFor my <i>Film Comment<\/i> column, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.filmcomment.com\/blog\/present-tense-arizona-dream\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">I wrote about <i>Arizona Dream<\/i><\/a>, starring Lili Taylor, Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway, Jerry Lewis and Vincent Gallo. It&#8217;s a lost masterpiece. <\/p>\n<p>\n<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/tumblr_mf0ownzNuU1rmgt9po1_500.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"264\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-166033\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nIn 2011, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=33135\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Matt Zoller Seitz and I discussed Nancy Savoca&#8217;s <i>Dogfight<\/i><\/a>, a film we both love. The comments thread to that piece is EPIC, and people continue to find that post and leave comments. They discover the movie and NEED to talk about it. <\/p>\n<p>I read a profile of Lili Taylor recently and the writer called <i>Dogfight<\/i> &#8220;unwatchable.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There is such a thing as a wrong opinion. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;If someone puts up $100 million on a movie, they&#8217;re gonna be concerned about whether they&#8217;ll get it back. So they&#8217;re not gonna make a movie about three girls, you know?&#8221; &#8212; Lili Taylor It&#8217;s her birthday today. Like most &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=162362\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,4,39],"tags":[2048,1855,2149],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162362"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196954,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162362\/revisions\/196954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=162362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=162362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}