The best movies and TV shows include some slapstick comedies and a few interesting dramatic turns along the way. Faris got her acting start in the drama club in school and took on several roles in school plays before she got her first taste of success when she appeared in the movie Eden, which screened at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. Faris then appeared in a straight-to-video slasher movie called Lover's Lane, which led to her breakout role one year later when she starred in the horror-parody Scary Movie.

While she took on a smaller role in a critically acclaimed indie horror movie called May after that, it wasn't horror that Faris ended up typecast in, but the comedy genre. Faris picked up several comedy roles over the years, all to varying success, including the critically panned The Hot Chick . However, Faris earned her highest critical acclaim on television when she took on the lead role in the sitcom Mom, with Allison Janney.

In 2012, Sacha Baron Cohen was back for another comedy, but this was not like his mockumentaries where he fooled people into believing he was someone else. Instead, this was a straight fictional comedy where Cohen plays Admiral General/Prime Minister Haffaz Aladeen/Allison Burgers, since he has ruled it so well as a dictator for years. The movie sees him visit the United States, only to end up in a comedy of errors.

Anna Faris plays Zoey, a human rights activist with whom Aladeen eventually falls in love and who convinces him to allow democracy into his country. The film received mixed to positive reviews, sitting at 57% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics calling it uneven but funny. It was also a major box office success, making $190.2 million, with praise going to Cohen's comic timing.

The movie that made Anna Faris a star was Scary Movie, a parody film that plays as a version of Scream but with the comic sensibilities of the Wayans Brothers. Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans and written by Marlon and Shawn Wayans, the movie starts off as a straight spoof on Scream, with the killer in a similar mask and costume, but everyone plays it all for laughs. (a version of Neve Campbell's Sidney Prescott from Scream).

In fact, everyone in the movie is based on a character from another horror film, with this mostly parodying Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. The film was a monster success, making $278 million on a $19 million budget with a surprising positive 51% Rotten Tomatoes score. It resulted in a franchise that saw five total movies with a sixth on the way in 2026, although Farris left the franchise after the fourth installment.

What Kevin Smith's Clerks tried to do for convenience store workers, the 2005 comedy Waiting... tried to do for people who wait tables in restaurants. The film takes place in a franchise restaurant called Shenaniganz, and it follows the crew who work there and the terrible customers they have to deal with throughout their shifts. The cast was impressive, with Justin Long and Ryan Reynolds in the two lead roles as Dean and Monty, two friends who work at the restaurant and often pull pranks on co-workers.

As for a waitress. Just like Clerks, this is a day-in-the-life movie. Critics mostly panned it, complaining that the gross-out comedy was more gross than funny. However, anyone who has ever worked in the restaurant industry will likely relate to a lot of what is shown in the movie, and there are some great laughs for those fans. It has since gained a small cult following since its release.

Anna Faris only appeared on four episodes of Friends, but she played a very important role. In the final season, she played Erica, a young woman from Ohio who was pregnant and . The role was a fun one, despite the limited appearances. She thought Chandler and Monica were a doctor and reverend, but the two eventually won her over despite their careers being nowhere near as impressive.

Erica then appeared in the final episode, "The Last One," when she delivered the baby and shocked Monica and Chandler when she delivered twins. Despite her low number of appearances, Faris was impressive in her role and was given a Gold Derby Award nomination for Best Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. She was also the last-ever recurring guest star on Friends before the show came to an end.

Anna Faris appeared in more than one poorly reviewed comedy over her career, making her average of good-to-bad movies in the negative. However, one of her underrated gems is the 2008 comedy The House Bunny. and hopeful Playmate who lives in the Playboy Mansion with Hugh Hefner. However, she gets a note saying she has to leave (it was from a rival Playmate pretending to be Hugh Hefner), so she moves out.

Not knowing where to go, she moves into a college sorority of outcasts and their new Housemother and helps these misfits come out of their shells and become confident women. The film was a moderate box office success, and while it received mixed to negative reviews, Faris received praise for her performance and comedy timing. Critics believed this could catapult Faris into a comedy leading lady, although that never happened on the big screen.

Anna Faris has voiced characters in several animated movies, but the best of these came in 2009 when she voiced Sam Sparks in the adaptation of the children's novel Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller before they took on The Lego Movie and the Spider-Verse movies, this film tells the story of the citizens on an island who have to deal with a failed experiment that causes water to turn into food, which causes giant good to rain down on the island.

Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) is a young scientist who wants to be a successful inventor, while . The movie received rave reviews from critics and earned four Annie Award nominations (Animated Effects, Best Animated Feature, Directing, and Writing). It also spawned a sequel that arrived four years later, with Hader and Faris returning to their roles.

One of Anna Faris's lesser-known roles came in 2003 with the indie horror movie May. Directed by up-and-coming horror filmmaker Lucky McKee, May is a take on the Frankenstein story. Angela Bettis stars as May Canady, an awkward young woman with a troubled childhood who begins dating a mechanic named Adam (Jeremy Sisto) and . When Adam dumps her and Polly cheats on her, she ends up breaking down.

After killing her first victim, she decides she needs "more parts" to create her perfect companion. Critics praised the film's bizarre nature, calling it an above-average slasher flick with a darker, deeper subtext that is also strangely moving. It was also a film festival darling, winning awards for Angela Betts and Lucky McKee at four different festivals worldwide.

Ang Lee's masterpiece, Brokeback Mountain, was a movie that starred Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as two ranchers who fall in love. They have to keep their love a secret and hidden thanks to the homophobia rampant in their line of work, and both men end up in relationships with women as well to cover up their true selves. While Ennis (Ledger) was married to Michelle Williams's Alma, Jack (Gyllenhaal) married Anne Hathaway's Lureen.

. She is a friend of Jack and Lureen and is married to Randall (David Harbour), a man with whom Jack ends up having an affair. It is a small role, but the movie is such an important piece of filmmaking that everyone in it is elevated. It landed on several top ten lists that year and was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, and Ang Lee won Best Director.

Another movie in which Anna Faris only had a small role was the Sofia Coppola drama Lost in Translation. This film stars Bill Murray as Bob, a fading actor having a midlife crisis who ends up in Japan to shoot a whiskey commercial. While there, he meets a disillusioned American named Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), and the two of them develop a close friendship throughout the story. staying at the same hotel as Charlotte and Bob.

It is an interesting role for Faris, as her character is meant to be the antithesis to Johansson's Charlotte. While Charlotte is contemplative and disillusioned, Faris's Kelly is vacuous and is in Japan to promote her new film. While she repulses Charlotte, Kelly is overwhelmed with admiration for Charlotte's husband, John, a celebrity photographer. The film received four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.

The biggest and best role of Anna Faris's career came on television. In Mom, and drug abuse. She decides she needs a fresh start and wants to clean up, so she moves to Napa, California, gets a job as a waitress, and starts attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Her mother, Bonnie (Allison Janney), is also a recovering addict and attends meetings. This series is about beating the addiction, but it has a great sense of humor throughout.

The series lasted for eight seasons, but, shockingly, Faris left before the final season and didn't return for the finale, saying her character's story was over with. It was a surprise because this was Faris's most prestigious work of her career. While not attracting attention from the Primetime Emmys or Golden Globes, earned three People's Choice Awards nominations, while Allison Janney won two Primetime Emmy Awards for playing her mother.