Leigh plays the expedition leader in Annihilation, a character defined by a flat affect that the film never explains. She plays absence rather than mystery, refusing to signal what the character knows or suspects, which leaves the audience unable to tell whether she is damaged, dishonest or already changed by the place.
She has worked in American film since the nineteen eighties, largely in independent and character driven cinema, and she has repeatedly taken roles requiring physical or emotional extremity that other performers turned down. She has collaborated with several directors known for improvisation and for very long takes, work that suits her refusal to hurry a scene.
Recurring subjects: dissociation, women who have stopped performing for other people, and characters played without any appeal for sympathy. She works with unusual stillness and delivers dialogue at a deliberately unhelpful pace, which unsettles any scene built on conversational rhythm.
She drew an Academy Award nomination for a supporting role in a western built on sustained cruelty, and the independent work she did in the nineteen nineties is widely admired for its risk taking. She is a common reference in discussions of performers who refuse audience comfort entirely.
For viewers who want performances that withhold everything. Suited to anyone approaching the expedition film, and to those who should follow it with the independent films she made in the nineteen nineties.
