From Indie Icon to Silver Surfer: Julia Garner’s Superpowered Rise.
Julia Garner has been one of the best-kept secrets in the independent movie business for years. She began her acting career in the type of low-budget films that made her a go-to casting choice for filmmakers who produced character-driven features that prize emotional depth. Across her filmography, Garner has built a reputation as a chameleonic force. She brings an intense interiority to her characters, and her characters simmer with a fierce emotional energy that lurks just beneath the surface.
In 2025, Garner has been trading festival cred for major movie titles, diving headfirst into a role in The Fantastic Four: First Steps that promises to catapult her to blockbuster fame. Nerdspin is revisiting Garner’s shape-shifting career by rounding up her most unforgettable roles, from her indie TV roots to her latest roles in Fantastic Four and the hotly anticipated 2025 horror-thriller Weapons.
Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)
In Fantastic Four: First Steps, Julia Garner assumes the role of the beloved Marvel character known as the Silver Surfer. According to The Wrap, Julia Garner does not portray Norrin Radd — “the most common character under the Silver Surfer moniker” — but, instead, portrays Shalla-Bal, Norrin’s lover from the original Marvel comics. In the Marvel comics, Norrin Radd comes from the planet Zenn-La and lives there with Shalla-Bal. Yet The Fantastic Four: First Steps turns this premise on its head, making Shalla-Bal the most eye-catching character. Critics have praised Garner for her “stoic vulnerability”, calling her performance “memorable” and “icy”, with her scenes with Galactus lending pitch-perfect emotional weight to the Fantastic Four. Garner is poised to deliver a bold and unforgettable reimagining of the Silver Surfer – one that promises to leave a lasting mark on the MCU.
Electrick Children (2012)
Julia Garner made her movie debut in Electrick Children, a luminous coming-of-age drama with a surreal plot twist. She plays Rachel, a sheltered teenager from a fundamentalist Mormon community. Rachel believes she becomes miraculously pregnant after listening to a forbidden rock cassette. Fleeing to Las Vegas in search of answers and the mysterious singer on the tape, Rachel’s journey is both literal and spiritual. Garner brings a memorable innocence to her debut role, balancing wide-eyed naivety with a quiet determination that displays an early command of onscreen tension.
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Ozark (2017-2022)
One of Garner’s earliest breakout roles came not in movies, but on television, where she stole every scene as the whip-smart Ruth Langmore in Netflix’s Ozark. As the youngest member of a backwoods crime family living in central Missouri, Ruth was a volatile mix of sharp intelligence and buried vulnerability. Garner breathed life into the character who could snap from raw fury to aching fragility in a heartbeat. Garner played these traits with astonishing precision over four seasons, earning three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.
The Assistant (2019)
On the big screen, Garner proved equally magnetic in The Assistant (2019), a devastating drama in which she plays Jane, a junior employee at a film production company quietly unravelling under the weight of systemic workplace abuse. Set over a single day, The Assistant follows Jane as she performs the menial tasks of her job, including answering phones and tidying up offices, while gradually becoming aware of her boss’s predatory behaviour and the institution’s complicity in covering it up. With minimal dialogue and a tense performance, Garner effectively captured the suffocating isolation of a woman caught in a toxic system with no clear path to speak out.
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Wolf Man (2025)
Julia Garner brings quiet intensity to the role of Charlotte Lovell in Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man, a sharp and composed journalist grappling with a growing sense of unease as her husband, Blake, begins to change into a terrifying beast. Garner makes the most of her screen time, grounding her performance as Charlotte in an emotional realism that makes her reactions believable. Her performance adds a layer of tension to the film’s domestic horror, with critics observing her ability to convey deep emotions through subtle expressions and gestures. Garner’s presence elevates the script with her onscreen presence, offering a cool counterpoint to the monster horror within Wolf Man.
Weapons (2025)
Julia Garner delivers a hauntingly powerful lead performance as Justine Gandy in Weapons (2025), the latest horror-thriller from Zach Cregger, the director of Barbarian (2022). Portraying a teacher whose entire class mysteriously vanishes overnight, Garner brings subtle strength to a character caught in paranoia and community suspicion. Garner, as Justine, is vulnerable and determined and carries the emotional weight of the film as tension ramps up and she searches for answers. In a movie earning a rare 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, Garner’s restrained performance makes the Weapons feel deeply human and unforgettable.
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