She’s best known for her many appearances in wildly popular TV shows that have armies of fans around the world. It’s no fluke that Sarah Wayne Callies seems to have a knack for landing massive leading roles in series that crush with ratings since she has a screen presence and charisma that matches her vast acting talents. While she’s best known for playing strong-minded women with extraordinary emotional stamina, Callies has also appeared in her fair share of other memorable roles too.
It may be a while since she’s been seen in her most famous roles but the abundance of streaming services available these days means her face remains a popular one on TV screens all around the world. Still only 45 years old, the American actress likely has many great years of acting ahead of her and her fans can’t wait to see what direction her career takes next. For now, though, we can still content ourselves with a look back at Sarah Wayne Callies’ best performances in film and TV to date.
10 Pay the Ghost
So the Nicolas Cage film horror film Pay the Ghost admittedly wasn’t his best. However, for Sarah Wayne Callies, it proved to be a role that she played very well. Calllies was very convincing as the mother of a son who disappeared and later appears to send supernatural messages for his parents to find him. Unfortunately, the film was panned badly by critics who took stabs at its slow pacing and lethargic attempts at horror that fell flat.
However, Callies’s role was a complex one though since she had to be a distraught mother who was simultaneously filled with a hope that she couldn’t fully trust. Despite Paying the Ghost not conjuring much to write home about critically, her time with Nicolas Cage did have a positive effect on her career. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it was Cage that helped her land one of the next big roles of her TV career at the time.
“Callies was in Toronto at the time, filming a thriller called Pay the Ghost alongside Nicolas Cage. Indeed, Callies credits Cage with pushing her through the rejection and encouraging her to send an audition on tape.”
9 Council of Dads
Since 2017, Sarah Wayne Callies has been playing to her strengths by choosing TV roles over movies. In one of her latest parts, she played Dr. Robin Perry, a widow who must contend with her husband’s death as his cancer leaves her to care for their five children by herself. Luckily, her husband Scott and she thought ahead as his final days loomed large. Before Scott’s tragic passing, he and Robin enlist three of their good friends to act as surrogate father figures to the children in Scott’s absence.
A great premise, Council of Dadslived up to its emotional plot and delivered plenty of tear-jerking drama. Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to force audiences to connect with the show, and it was canceled after just one season. Nevertheless, Callies, amid other strong cast members like Clive Standen, played their parts in it as well as anyone could have hoped for.
8 The Show
In the drama film, The Show, Sarah Wayne Callies joined a great cast that included Josh Duhamel, Famke Janssen, and Giancarlo Esposito. The movie portrayed a disturbing look at the consumerist lifestyles of modern society through the eyes of a tragedy that occurs during a reality show finale. The Show also took a satirical view of how everything is commoditized by reality shows.
Shows like The Bachelor are the chief culprits where everything from people’s love lives to their emotional struggles are paraded to satiate the appetites of the TV-watching public while raking in as much as possible in ratings. Callies was excellent in the film as she played the lead character’s brother, a woman who is a pediatric oncology nurse, but also unstable since she’s also a struggling addict that relapses in spectacular fashion.
7 Into the Storm
Found footage films usually lend themselves well to horror films as shaky camera shots and edgy cinematography make for grittier scenes. This same concept was successfully applied to disaster films in Into the Storm. The big-budget flick featured some great special effects of terrifying storms and tornadoes that rip through a community as a high school prepares for its graduation ceremony.
Sarah Wayne Callies plays one of the lead roles in the film as a meteorologist named Allison. Her job puts her at the center of the pulsating action in the film while her character is trapped between the devastating weather, her boss, her passion for her job, and her fears as a mother. While the film didn’t fare well with critics, it did plenty well at the box office as it took in over $160 million against a $50 million budget.
6 The Long Road Home
The dramatic miniseries The Long Way Home was a dark portrayal of one of the darkest chapters of the US invasion of Iraq. Based on a bestselling book by Martha Raddatz, the story was a recounting of the infamous siege of Sadr City where a newly deployed US army unit was ambushed. The series takes place in real-time and chronicles the entire eight hours of the horrendous battle that the soldiers were subjected to.
It also featured an amazing ensemble cast with Michael Kelly, Jason Ritter, Sarah Wayne Callies, and Kate Bosworth in its main roles. A gritty and intense portrayal of the events known as Black Sunday, the show was praised for the support it drummed up for the war efforts but was also criticized by the likes of Variety for being too propagandist. Whatever side of the debate you fall on, there was no denying that it featured some stellar acting and was rightly nominated for a Critic’s Choice Television Award for Best Limited Series.
5 The Other Side of the Door
Sarah Wayne Callies was excellent when she took another stab at horror films in The Other Side of the Door. Set in Mumbai, India, the film’s location added a great layer of Eastern mysticism and unconventional suspense to it as it featured scary Indian shamans reputed to consume dead human flesh and other terrifying culture shocks. A tortured mother named Maria Harwood, Callies’ character lost her son in a car accident and is consumed by guilt as a result, since she could only save one of her children and chose her daughter.
Her housekeeper recognizes her grief and tells her about a sacred place where she can communicate with the other side through a mystical door in a remote Hindu temple. Intending to say her final goodbyes to her son through the door, she fails to heed the woman’s warning to never open it. By doing so, Maria inadvertently lets out an evil incarnation of her dead son’s spirit, and her family’s life is thrown into chaos as a result.
4 Prison Break: The Final Break
Back in 2005, Sarah Wayne Callies was contending with small, single-episode roles in shows when she landed the role of a lifetime. Joining the cast of the super hit show, Prison Break proved to be career-defining for her. She initially appeared in every season aside from Season 3. Her fame and popularity from the show were reignited in 2009 when she also appeared in a standalone television film from the franchise called Prison Break: The Final Break.
The film saw Callies reprising her role and its events take place in between another notable event in the original show’s timeline. This time, framed for murder, her character gets herself thrown in prison where she is targeted and suffers some horrific treatment. While not as appealing as the original show, it was still a great film and a spirited performance by Callies.
3 Colony
In recent years, after cementing herself as a major television star, Sarah Wayne Callies might have been forgiven for thinking she was done with post-apocalyptic shows. That was until Nicolas Cage convinced her to audition for the show, Colony. She ended up landing a lead role in it and stayed on it for three seasons before it was canceled by USA Network.
The show depicted a dystopian society where people were subject to a military occupation that served an alien group called the “Hosts.” Callies played Katie Bowman, the wife of an FBI agent and a secret operative herself. Using her ownership of a bar as a cover, she secretly worked for a resistance group that springs up to take on the Hosts. A solid show with some superb acting from Callies, its stellar reviews, unfortunately, weren’t enough to save it from the death knell of low ratings.
2 Prison Break
As a show that captured the imagination of viewers around the world in the early 2000s, Prison Break soon became a global sensation. Featuring some amazingly intricate plot lines, brilliant writing, and great acting that made the likes of Wentworth Miller instant stars, the show was a huge hit, to say the least. With a premise that sees a man deliberately sent to prison, so he can hatch an elaborate plan to break his brother out, the show seemed destined to catch on for this novelty alone.
However, after engaging audiences, its genius plot grew more complex and interesting from there and soon had fans hooked. As an early protagonist, Sarah Wayne Callies made her name in it by playing Sara Tancredi, a prison doctor who takes a shining to the main character and decides to help him with his escape plans. As one of the standout performers in the show, Callies went on to appear in its spin-off tv film as the show’s influence catapulted her career to heights she would only eclipse with one of her other performances to date.
1 The Walking Dead
In what has become a true phenom of television and a ratings juggernaut that’s spawned a massive TV show franchise, The Walking Dead was the first iteration of this highly popular world. Featuring 11 globally popular seasons, Sarah Wayne Callies played one of the most memorable characters in the first three seasons. Based on a comic series, the show roped in a character from them called Lori Grimes whom Callies made her own. Lori, like everyone else in the show and its spin-offs, has to fight for her survival against terrifying odds as the world is plunged into a zombie apocalypse.
She’s known to be strong-willed and kind, but also emotionally charged and a lot to take at times. Despite her flaws, her character arc made for some of the most touching and engaging moments in the history of the show. Through her wonderfully layered depiction of Lori, Callies firmly wrote herself into the show’s epic character history, and to this day, remains one of its truly memorable characters in a TV universe that has now stretched on for well over a decade.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
