Vera Farmiga is especially good at playing women who have more to deal with than fear. We value her quiet gestures and unforced warmth, even when the films rely on our affection to excuse their delays.
Fi1m perspective
In the kitchen scenes of The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025), Vera Farmiga lets Lorraine Warren look tired rather than frightened. Alongside Patrick Wilson’s Ed, she gives the marriage a warmth that survives another round of supernatural trouble. We were touched by their conversations because Farmiga’s weariness and Wilson’s stiff-backed irritation make the marriage feel lived in. They had been playing these people for twelve years by this film, and the ease between them makes that time count. Farmiga is worth watching here even when the film gives us good reasons to lose patience.
Her breakthrough in Down to the Bone (2004), playing a mother with a drug addiction, established how much she could convey without a large display of distress. In The Departed (2006), Scorsese’s thriller gives her psychiatrist Madolyn less development than the men around her. We rate the film highly, but it is an imperfect demonstration of what she can do. She brings a recognisable person to a supporting role that could have been merely useful to the plot. Her frequent-flyer businesswoman Alex Goran in Up in the Air (2009) offers another example of warmth without easy reassurance.
Horror became a regular occupation, through Orphan (2009), Lorraine in The Conjuring (2013), and Norma Bates in Bates Motel (2013–2017). The maternal roles recur, but treating Farmiga as a specialist in screaming misses the quieter work. A small change of expression can suggest a conflict she has not yet put into words. Working with director James Wan on the Conjuring films, she brought a human warmth to a role that might have been confined to announcing supernatural trouble.
The limitation is what happens when a film starts relying on that affection to excuse its own delays. Michael Chaves’s Last Rites keeps returning to the Warrens’ feelings while the haunted Smurl family waits for attention. Farmiga and Wilson remain good company, but their kitchen conversations cannot justify repeatedly leaving another family in danger. It is a mixed film with two performances we would not want to lose. Start with The Conjuring if Lorraine is new to you; save the long goodbye for when the attachment has had time to form.
Biography
Vera Ann Farmiga is an American actress. She began her professional career on stage as an understudy in the original Broadway production of Taking Sides (1996) and studied acting at Syracuse University.
Farmiga's breakthrough came with her lead role in Down to the Bone (2004). She went on to appear in The Departed (2006), The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008) and Up in the Air (2009), for which she received an Academy Award nomination. She made her directorial debut with Higher Ground (2011), in which she also starred.
She is known for portraying paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren in the Conjuring Universe films, including The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) and The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025). Her sister Taissa Farmiga is also an actress.
