Justice for Jeannie Berlin!
Monday, April 13, 2026 at 11:00AM 
THE BRIDE!, Maggie Gyllenhaal | © Warner Bros.
The Team Experience had a lot of fun voting on that “Who should be the Next Amy Madigan?” poll, but, lovely as the final results might be, there will always be something to gripe about. For me, the major complaint is that I was the only fellow to pick Jeannie Berlin for their top ten, a grave injustice that warrants a write-up all by itself. If you don’t buy that excuse, then there’s The Bride!’s VOD release, where this erstwhile Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee dons a Sandy Powell-designed maid outfit to play Frankenstein’s Igor as reinvented by Maggie Gyllenhaal at her looniest. As Greta, Berlin makes for a delightful, if small, presence, hinting at a soft-spoken oddness that strikes an even weirder note than the movie’s other, more extravagant, grotesqueries.
Fans of the actress shouldn’t be too surprised by this gentle scene-stealing, as Berlin has been doing this sort of thing for a good fifty years…
THE HEARTBREAK KID, Elaine May | © Paramount Pictures
As daughter to the great Elaine May, Jeannie Berlin is one of those nepo babies whose interest in the arts and the industry almost feels assigned at birth. It didn’t take long for her to start on as an actress in the New York stage and, by 1969, the 20-year-old thespian was already making her screen debut in the TV movie In Name Only. The next year, she appeared in a series of small parts on film, but 1972 was when Jeannie Berlin became a force to be reckoned with, in great part thanks to her mother. May cast her as the obnoxious bride in The Heartbreak Kid, saddling her own daughter with a Neil Simon caricature whose humiliation is one of the text’s central tenets.
Between a black-hearted comic sensibility and formal strategies that hone in on the audience’s discomfort, often trapping the viewer in excruciating long takes, May twists The Heartbreak Kid into one of the most tonally adventurous mainstream movies coming from Hollywood in the 1970s. Yet, her riskiest gestures all seem to center on Berlin’s presence, an odd mix of cruelty and sympathy always swirling around and within her performance. As much as the Supporting Actress race at the 45th Academy Awards was a downright bloodbath, Berlin gets my vote. The seafood dinner scene would be enough to earn her gold, so brilliant are her tragicomic convulsions.
SHEILA LEVINE IS DEAD AND LIVING IN NEW YORK, Sidney J. Furie | © Paramount Pictures
One would presume that Berlin’s career would have exploded after that, but it wasn’t so. At least, not on the silver screen. Her biggest opportunity on that front came in 1975, when Berlin played the only lead role in her entire film career, taking on the titular part in Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York, Sidney J. Furie’s adaptation of Gail Parent’s novel of the same title. As an awkward Pennsylvanian trying her luck in the Big Apple, Berlin is rather extraordinary, weaponizing her comedic instincts to barbed effect, articulating major character development while rarely calling attention to the transformation, unless she’s turning it into a joke.
Watching the flick, I hadn’t quite realized how intimately I’d come to know Sheila, nor how singular Berlin’s choices had been all along, until the end arrived with a smack of romantic inconclusion. The actress manages to map out a surge of confidence even as she never relinquishes the humor in social clumsiness, in being an odd duck, or escaping the model of what a Hollywood heroine should be. Considering just how whack the Best Actress race was in 1975, I’m saddened by Berlin’s lack of traction across the board. Heaven knows she deserved a Globe nomination at the very least. C’mon, Shampoo didn’t need two nominations in that category.
MARGARET, Kenneth Lonergan | © Searchlight Pictures
Maybe Berlin didn’t come up in any ballot other than my own because she’s never really come close to Oscar gold after that 1972 nomination. If anything, the only other moment she was in active consideration came with Margaret, nearly four decades later. Cutting through that film’s teenage delusion, Berlin is like a bucket of ice water thrown directly at the protagonist and audience alike, a flash of righteous fury that demands applause. Go watch it right now and, when her big scenes come, you'd better stand up and give Jeannie Berlin the standing ovation. Sure, a whole slew of folks in that supporting cast deserve such recognition, but she’s the first among equals.
In her golden years, Berlin traded youthful inelegance for a sense of dramatic authority that can be seen in this Lonergan gem, as well as a lot of her TV work, which has included critically lauded supporting turns in such projects as The Night Of miniseries and Succession. To this day, I’m surprised she earned no buzz for the former, with The Fabelmans giving her the sole awards resurgence she had in the last decade and a SAG ensemble nomination to show for it. Wouldn’t you love to see Berlin back at the Oscars with a new nod, a role worthy of her talents, some glorious moment comparable to Madigan’s this year? I sure would.
SUCCESSION | © HBO
What actresses missing from the Team Experience poll results do you love most? What absence made you wince and wish for a recount?
Reader Comments (1)
Believe that I placed her in my top 10. Would’ve completely got my 1972 vote as BSA as well.
Going on the reality of roles-I rewatched Woody Allen’s Cafe Society, which Berlin is in. Just don’t know if any type of project would ever come along to get her another nomination. If anything, Allen might be able to come to the rescue.