Elisabeth Shue can make a patient, sympathetic character feel as complicated as the person causing the trouble. We rate her highest in Leaving Las Vegas, where she makes the less showy role matter just as much.
Fi1m perspective
In Leaving Las Vegas (1995), Elisabeth Shue makes us believe that Sera wants Ben Sanderson’s company, even when we struggle to understand what she accepts from him. The writing gives Ben the more immediately arresting predicament, and she has to make Sera’s loneliness count alongside it. We were moved by her patience because Shue makes it feel chosen, rather than something the screenplay requires her to supply. Sera needs companionship too, and Shue never lets us forget it.
The early parts made use of a more straightforward, girl-next-door appeal. Ali in The Karate Kid (1984) established her in youth films. Adventures in Babysitting (1987), Cocktail (1988) and Jennifer Parker in Back to the Future Part II (1989) followed. Sera marked the decisive move towards darker, more vulnerable characters. It also showed how much her warmth could accomplish when a film asked something difficult of it.
Mike Figgis does not always help: his tendency to make despair look desirable is our chief reservation about Leaving Las Vegas. John Smith’s editing, though, gives Nicolas Cage’s humour and Shue’s sympathy time to register. Figgis’s own jazz score lets tenderness into material that could otherwise become numbing, and the actors make their time together feel worth having. Shue gives us reasons to care about Sera even when the film presses too hard for our affection.
Steven Soderbergh’s The Underneath (1995) gives her considerably less to work with. As Susan Crenshaw, she plays a woman Michael meets on his way home and then does not know what to do with. We found the film cold because its central man gives it so little to explore. Shue has a supporting part, and little opportunity to change that.
The subsequent career brought fewer leading dramatic opportunities and more supporting and genre parts. Television work included Julie Finlay in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation from 2012 to 2015 and Madelyn Stillwell in The Boys (2019). We would welcome more parts that give her character’s wants the same attention as those of the person beside her. Start with Leaving Las Vegas, provided tenderness without reassurance is what the evening calls for.
Biography
Elisabeth Shue is an American actress. She made her feature film debut in The Karate Kid (1984) and appeared in Adventures in Babysitting (1987), Cocktail (1988), Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990). She played Susan Crenshaw in The Underneath (1995).
Shue received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in Leaving Las Vegas (1995), along with nominations for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe. She has also appeared in The Saint (1997), Hollow Man (2000), Piranha 3D (2010), Battle of the Sexes (2017), Death Wish (2018) and Greyhound (2020). On television she played Julie Finlay in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2012–2015) and Madelyn Stillwell in The Boys (2019).
Shue attended Wellesley College and graduated from Harvard University with a degree in government. Her brother Andrew Shue is also an actor.
