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Sun 16 November 2025 18:15, UK
When finding her own intensity on-set, Julia Garner has looked for inspiration in some of the all-time greats.
It didn’t take Garner very long to establish herself as one of the most committed, unapologetically feverish actresses of her generation. Garner managed to light up the television world at first when she had her breakout role in Ozark as Ruth Langmore, a fiery teenager who helps run her family’s criminal enterprise.
Ozark quickly became one of Netflix’s biggest hits ever, and won Garner three Emmy Awards. However, her audacious performances didn’t stop when Ozark reached its brutal conclusion in 2022; in between seasons, Garner popped up in the workplace drama The Assistant and the psychological thriller The Royal Hotel.
As of recently, the actor has become a definitive “scream queen” thanks to being in Blumhouse’s reimagining of Wolf Man and the terrifying horror film Weapons.
Garner can thank some of her co-stars for inspiring her commitment, as she told Awards Watch that Ozark’s Tom Pelphrey “did an amazing job playing Ben”, her tumultuous love interest, in the show’s third season. Pelphrey perfectly fit the role of a bipolar anti-hero who caused chaos for the Byrde family’s criminal enterprise, but he also happened to share a lot in common with many of Garner’s idols.
“I feel like my favorite actors are intense actors,” she said. “Even if I do have a natural intensity on screen, I try to lean into it because I think that’s really captivating. You think about Al Pacino, how intense he is on screen, or Gena Rowlands in the Cassavetes movies.”
Pacino and Rowlands aren’t exactly out-there picks when it comes to naming all-time greats, but it’s easy to forget just how seismic their performances felt during the New Hollywood wave of the 1970s. At the time he landed the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Pacino was still a relatively unknown stage actor, suddenly going toe-to-toe with the mighty Marlon Brando. And while the two were fairly evenly matched, that role kicked off a staggering run for Pacino, who went on to star in some of the most tense, paranoid thrillers of the era – Scarecrow, Panic in Needle Park, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and …And Justice For All.
As for Rowlands, the word “intense” doesn’t nearly do justice in describing the extraordinary work that she did alongside her husband, director John Cassavetes. Within films like Opening Night and A Woman Under The Influence, Rowlands so perfectly embodied the spirit of characters in the midst of breakdowns that her performances captured the authentic realism of a stage performance.
Of course, Garner is too much of a cinephile to cap off her list of favourites at just two names; when talking about other “intense actors” who have “that energy”, Garner cited several living legends, including Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Cate Blanchett.
What’s interesting about many of these stars is just how young they were when they earned their breakout roles; De Niro was only 31 when he captured the essence of a young Brando in The Godfather: Part II, and Blanchett was only 29 when she became the Queen of England in Elizabeth. Garner, who is 31, has already crafted a fairly outstanding filmography filled with contemporary classics like Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
She may not be in conversation for the most intense actors of all-time just yet, but she’s at the beginning of her career.
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