Sarah Silverman

In Maestro (2023), Sarah Silverman gets the best dry lines and delivers them without looking up. As Shirley, Leonard Bernstein's sister, she offers some welcome relief from Bradley Cooper's careful reconstruction of the man at the centre. The delivery looks easy beside Cooper's more conspicuous acting. It is a supporting performance, but a good place to start with what she does well.

An earlier supporting part, Brenda in There's Something About Mary (1998), places her in a comedy we like for its sharp performances and Cameron Diaz's warmth. Her own comic persona became the main attraction with the concert film Jesus Is Magic (2005), mixing stand-up, song and sketch. The Sarah Silverman Program (2007–2010) then made an exaggerated version of herself its central character. Her smiling, cheerfully arrogant persona makes an ugly remark sound quite ordinary.

The weakness is that we can start to anticipate the offence before the joke has arrived. We are less persuaded by the early material's use of slurs, where causing offence can seem to do the work of writing a joke. The childlike silliness is more interesting, because it makes the speaker's self-satisfaction look foolish. We prefer jokes about the speaker's vanity to jokes that rely on a forbidden word.

Wreck-It Ralph (2012) uses her timing through the voice of Vanellope, while I Smile Back (2015) gives her the dramatic lead as Laney Brooks. The dramatic playing is raw in a way her detached comic persona seldom permits. We would try both before deciding that the stand-up persona tells us everything about her acting.

Cooper makes good use of her restraint in Maestro, and we would like more directors to trust it. She can be funny without becoming the subject of the scene, a useful skill in a film already so occupied by its leading man. Carey Mulligan remains our reason to recommend it; Silverman's contribution need not be inflated to be appreciated. Start there for the supporting actor, then try Jesus Is Magic for the much less discreet comic.