Tracey Makes Vulture's 40 Best Dramatic Performances by Comedians List

Vulture chose Tracey's performance in Household Saints for its list.

The 40 Best Dramatic Performances by Comedians

24. Tracey Ullman, Household Saints (1993) 
Though Household Saints was an art-house favorite back in 1993, it’s sort of disappeared into the ether in the decades since; with it has gone Tracey Ullman’s terrific turn as Catherine Falconetti Santangelo, a fully assimilated Italian-American who’s stymied by her teen daughter Teresa’s obsession with Catholicism. Writer-director Nancy Savoca’s follow-up to her acclaimed True Love and Dogfight, Household Saints was an ambitious project meant to cover the changing lives of three generations of women in New York’s Little Italy. As the lady in the middle — daughter of a devout immigrant, mother to pious adolescent — Ullman serves as the audience surrogate, capturing how a person can be cognizant of the wonders of her faith while wishing they were a little less obtrusive.