Judy Greer appears in four of 2015’s biggest film releases: Tomorrowland, Entourage, Jurassic World, and Ant-Man, but blink and you might miss her. Despite being a hugely prolific and talented Hollywood actress, Greer was kept on the sidelines for these major releases, usually playing underdeveloped characters that fall into the mother or wife category. Vanity Fair has collected every line she had in this summer’s movies, and the results are pretty bleak. The magazine even included a wordcloud made up of all of her lines that highlights just how frequently Greer has to say “you” in movies and tell other people they’re going to be “okay”:
Greer started out her film career playing different iterations of the “best friend character” in romantic comedies. Even considering in her scene-stealing performance in 13 Going On 30, almost all of Greer’s lines were just filler or exposition. This has been the pattern for most of Greer’s characters, who often get to talk about the other characters around them (that giant “you” in the wordcloud) but rarely about themselves or their own wants. Scott Meslow at The Week has even coined the term “The Judy Greer Effect,” as he looks at why the actress keeps getting boxed into thankless roles.