Audrie Neenan
Audrie Neenan is an actor, born 1950.
Casting directors spent thirty-five years hiring Audrie Neenan to be the immovable object. Her own summary of the work is blunt about it: judges, policewomen and mouthy waitresses, women who are not going to be talked around by anybody.
The role people remember is Ray Parkins in Sudden Impact in 1983, one of the ugliest characters in a hard 1980s action film, played with no attempt at sympathy and no wink to the audience. It is a genuinely unpleasant performance in the sense that it is supposed to be, and it is why she is remembered at all.
Television turned the same quality into a franchise fixture. She played Lois Preston, a judge, on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and judges elsewhere in that world, parts that are almost entirely tone: a few lines, no backstory, and the full authority of a courtroom to establish inside twenty seconds.
The film work in between is small parts in good films, which is a decent way to spend a career. Sister Raymond in Doubt, Woman at Bar #2 in The Departed, the admitting nurse in Ghost Town, Aunt Emily in Puzzle, Pastor Pritchard in The Baxter. She is also funnier than the list suggests: Ivy in Funny Farm and the policewoman in See No Evil, Hear No Evil are both comic performances built on the same refusal to be charmed.
Movies (9)
TV (4)
Where to start with Audrie Neenan
Fair warning before you start with Sudden Impact: her role is the cruelest thing in a hard film, and she is entirely convincing in it, which is the uncomfortable part. It is still the performance to see first.
For a gentler introduction, Doubt puts her in a nun's habit among very good actors doing very quiet work, and Puzzle gives her Aunt Emily in the warmest thing on the list.
The comedies are the pleasant surprise. Funny Farm and See No Evil, Hear No Evil both place her opposite big comic leads and she declines to soften for either of them.
The Departed is one scene at a bar. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is the long-running credit, and any episode with Judge Preston will do, since the part is the same reliable thing every time.